How rules shape cities: zoning gone wrong

Emily Talen, ASU professor of planning, talked about how city zoning, coding and laws got started, and how they need to be changed to help build more livable cities, as a guest on the nationally syndicated Wisconsin Public Radio show "To the Best of Our Knowledge," which aired around the country the week of Oct. 21.

In the program, Talen makes the case that in the contemporary United States, the reasons behind zoning codes and laws aren’t always clear, and don’t always foster livable communities. 

The history of zoning “is a story of taking a good idea too far, and trying to make zoning solve all kinds of perceived social problems,” argues Talen. She explains that the form-based code movement, in which zoning is backed up by a visual plan, provides an alternative to current zoning code.

“The end goal is to create communities that are walkable, diverse, compact, and are transit-oriented,” she says.

Talen has explored these ideas at more length in her 2011 book, "City Rules: How Regulations Affect Urban Form," and in her online archive of city plans, The Codes Project. She is co-editor of the Journal of Urbanism, and has written extensively about urban form, designing for diversity, sustainable cities and new urbanism.

Talen is a professor of planning in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, an academic unit of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. She is also a Senior Sustainability Scholar in the Global Institute of Sustainability and on the teaching faculty of the School of Sustainability.

The full “City Living” program is available at ttbook.org/book/cities.  For Talen’s segment, see link below.