Talk:Zoning in the United States

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 26 August 2021 and 24 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Minstro.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 05:30, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Content move

I moved much of the USA-specific content from Zoning to Zoning in the United States (land use). In the USA section I put a main article link that directs the article audience to the USA-specific article.EECavazos 18:28, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Citations

The case law citations need to be filled out. I'll try that sometime this week.EECavazos 23:05, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Shamming

The language concerning sham zoning really needs to be improved. We can't simply refer to the common law and assume everyone knows what's up. At the least, an example would be helpful; surely there is some relevant caselaw! rewinn (talk) 05:37, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Agree. Also, need a section that defines 'restrictive zoning ordinances' as regards local obscenity laws. Would be helpful to link here on cases like Miller v. California, etc. Malke 2010 (talk) 16:21, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Beginning unclear

The current start of the site does not explain what "zoning is" but starts with what it includes. Would be good to have a bit more context and/or link to the Zoning page. I just came to this page from a search for "zoning board" and couldn't figure out what zoning was without going to the page for Zoning. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.42.113.76 (talk) 19:36, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

External links modified

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Deleting section

Some sections of this article fail to have any inline citations. I am making a wholesale deletion of the section "Facial", the text of which follows:

There have been notable legal challenges to zoning regulations. In 1926 the United States Supreme Court upheld zoning as a right of U.S. states (typically via their cities and counties) to impose on landowners. The case was Village of Euclid, Ohio v. Ambler Realty Co. (often shortened to Euclid v. Ambler), 272 U.S. 365 (1926). The village had zoned an area of land held by Ambler Realty as a residential neighborhood. Ambler argued that it would lose money because if the land could be leased to industrial users it would have netted a great deal more money than as a residential area. Euclid won, and a precedent was set favorable to local enforcement of zoning laws.

In doing so, the court accepted the arguments of zoning defenders that it met two essential needs. First, zoning extended and improved on nuisance law in that it provided advance notice that certain types of uses were incompatible with other uses in a particular district. The second argument was that zoning was a necessary municipal-planning instrument.

The Euclid case was a facial challenge, meaning that the entire scheme of regulation was argued to be unconstitutional under any set of circumstances. The United States Supreme Court justified the ordinance saying that a community may enact reasonable laws to keep the pig out of the parlor, even if pigs may not be prohibited from the entire community.

Since the Euclid case, there have been no more facial challenges to the general scheme. By the late 1920s most of the nation had developed a set of zoning regulations.

Oldsanfelipe (talk) 17:37, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

While there wasn't any footnotes in the section and you can delete unreferenced material, for future reference I would say that the case name in itself can be considered a citation for what the court decided in the case, even though it should have more parameters to help users find the reference. The first sentence of WP:CS states: A citation, also called a reference, uniquely identifies a source of information". The last paragraph ("Since the Euclid case...") definitely needed a separate reference, though. That said, the section name was not the best ("Facial validity of zoning laws" would be better) and since there's already a section about the case in the article, I don't think it was improper to remove that section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AHeneen (talk • contribs) 10:24, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Hi AHeneen:

I wrote this before I made the changes to the article, and in the end, I did not delete the paragraph. I moved much of the text to a section Amber and deleted redundant material. If I pared too much, we can put it back in. Organization is an issue with this article. In a previous version, redundant explanations of Ambler came up in three different places in the article. I interpreted this as editors themselves either being confused about the organization of the article, or else, editing the article without reading it first in its entirety. Ambler needs to be explained early in the article as so many zoning-related events of the 30s and late-20s are reactions to Ambler.

To address one of your concerns in a direct way, I did delete the section title. I thought it made more sense to organize the article around a temporal narrative rather than a topical narrative. It will make it easier for readers and other editors to read the article.

Your other concern addresses my characterization of the former paragraph as failing to have "any inline citations." You pointed out that the paragraph cited the name of the case. You are right about this in at least one sense. However, the case is itself a primary source, not a secondary one, so the citation represents the editor's own legal analysis, and not material supported by a credible secondary source. Please see, WP:PSTS: "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources and, to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources and primary sources." That an entire paragraph is supported by a single citation to a primary source suggests that it is original research.

I was able to find one secondary source to use as an inline citation for Ambler from a case notes series. Unfortunately, it only included one or two sentences about the findings of the Supreme Court case, and no other commentary. I am still looking for a good secondary source to cover this. There are no shortages of good books about Ambler. I just need to find one and read it in order to provide the source. If you already read a book on Ambler, that would save me the trouble of providing the citation to a credible secondary source. Sincerely, Oldsanfelipe (talk) 14:42, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Article has multiple issues, reorganization

There is interesting content, but parts of the article are devoid of citations. I have preserved some previous text by finding citations. The emphasis of this article seems to be on court cases, with some planning history and theory thrown in. I think the content would be better served by changing the emphasis to planning history, with more of a temporal narrative and a less topical narrative.

I would be more inclined to preserve the current narrative if more previous editors had provided more sources. Providing sources is one of the cardinal rules of Wikipedia.

Are my ideas for organization the best, or does someone else have a better idea for improving the article? This is what the talk page is for. Oldsanfelipe (talk) 17:38, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Ideas for improvement?

@Coolcaesar::

I disagree with your reversion. Having one sentence in the lede with a bit of overlap with a similar article is appropriate. I just need to add an internal link. I am quite aware of the distinction between zoning and zoning in the United States. Hopefully you have some ideas for improving the article Zoning in the United States. I can use the help. Oldsanfelipe (talk) 19:32, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Performance versus incentive

One edit asserted that there are four broad categories of zoning types, two of which are incentive-type and performance-type. This statement is unsourced. The descriptions of incentive-type and performance-type zoning are also unsourced. Futhermore, these categories appear to be scarcely distinguishable.

If anyone reason has to think these should be distinguished, please offer a good secondary source. Thank you, Oldsanfelipe (talk) 12:59, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Invitation to US Housing Edit-a-thon

Please join us on 13 December 2020, 12:00-14:00 EST, as we update and improve articles in Wikipedia related to housing in the United States of America. Sign up here. -- M2545 (talk) 12:11, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Major revisions

I am going to implement substantial changes to this article. Many of them involve filling the great number of citation gaps in this website, although the content needs updating as well. For one, I could not find any references to "Euclidean II" zoning anywhere on the internet. It describes hierarchical zoning, and the tone seems very biased. I propose removing the subsections under Euclidean and reincorporating some of this content into a comparison of flat and hierarchical Euclidean zoning. Additionally, incentive and smart zoning are not their own types of zoning. I am going to move them to a subcategory of zoning entitled "Provisions" although perhaps there is a better name fo this. Additionally, I found a source that states the first initial zoning law in LA was in 1904, not 1908. This goes against the claims on this article and much of the internet. The source is a dissertation, so I am not sure if it is a valid source. Nevertheless, it seems to have a wealth of historical data to back up this statement that is unfortunately not available on the internet, so if it is not a valid source, additional research is needed. Minstro (talk) 03:23, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

@Minstro: — that sounds great. Have at it and be bold. While you're working on things, it looks like it'd be great to merge some of the smaller sections with others. For example, the "environmental" subsection only has one sentence underneath it which is not enough substance to warrant a whole header. Food for thought. Muttnik talk 03:41, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Article could definitely use improvement. If one RS WP:RS says something opposite what other RS's say, we should go with what the majority say, if RS's are split, we should say that. I don't know whether dissertations are generally considered RS or not...I don't know how much broad peer review they get compared with journal articles.---Avatar317^(talk) 22:29, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

I would definitely keep what the majority of the sources say as opposed to the one dissertation. Muttnik talk 00:33, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Hi, I found another source (a book) that backs up what the dissertation says. They cite the same historical documents. This seems valid to me. I would argue that while they are in the minority, they are more reliable as they are looking at the topic of zoning specific to Los Angeles as opposed to its greater development, and therefore have done more research into the specifics. Minstro (talk) 02:13, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Types of Zoning

I am thinking of integrating most of the discussion of types of zoning into the main Zoning page. That would eliminate some duplication between the two pages and set the stage for this page to have more of a narrative flow. Any thoughts? — Preceding unsigned comment added by JMMaok (talk • contribs) 02:25, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Contemporary Urban Issues - Housing

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 16 January 2024 and 8 May 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Nataliejgomez (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Claudiabudzyn.

— Assignment last updated by Notjanetjackson (talk) 18:04, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi, Natalie and @Notjanetjackson!

I am a participant in another Wiki Education course, State Politics and Policy facilitated by @Carter (Wiki Ed) and @Will (Wiki Ed). I am also working on the Zoning in the US page for my course and wanted to touch base with you about the best ways we can coordinate our efforts.

My current plans are to integrate the Origins and History section and the Legal Challenges section, along with some additional events, into a unified timeline with a narrative flow. I've currently drafted an outline of the section here: User:JMMaok/Zoning

What are you most interested in editing? If you were also taking a timeline approach, perhaps we could divide by time period? Or if you were more interested in Scope, Implementation, Amendments, Housing Affordability, or Criticism, our work is likely to be complementary already. JMMaok (talk) 20:33, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi @JMMaok! Sorry for the delay. @Nataliejgomez is going to be focusing on fleshing out the "Exclusionary" and "Health and environmental concerns" sections of the article, so it sounds like there won't be much overlap. Your work will be excellent for improving the article, so thank you! Based on your sandbox, it looks like you might also be editing and bringing over information on zoning types from the main article on zoning? Notjanetjackson (talk) 13:11, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! Yes, it sounds like there won't be much overlap.

Actually I did the opposite, integrated the zoning types that were in the Zoning in the US page into a more complete listing on the main Zoning article, because the types are general concepts that apply around the world and it's easier to maintain them in only one place, with a few country-specific clarifications on the country pages. JMMaok (talk) 00:10, 12 April 2024 (UTC)