Zoning Articles

I tried my best to make a persuasive concise case on this website against zoning and for private property rights. I don’t believe that I succeeded at this task as well as I’d like, but perhaps some other authors can make an even more persuasive case than I did—so, I’ll link a few articles below about zoning that I found especially worthwhile to read, for whomever it may interest and for whatever they may be worth…

• Reason: “Land Use Without Zoning” (1974 Feb)

This Reason review of a book entitled Land Use Without Zoning written by zoning expert Bernard Siegan presents one of the best concise cases that I’ve ever read (yet) against zoning. Its author explains how zoning is counterproductive, as proven by hard data, and also why nonzoning is preferable policy, as exemplified by the city of Houston.

• FEE: “Houston Says No to Zoning” (1994 Aug 01)

This FEE article explains why Houstonians repeatedly rejected zoning to better serve homebuyers, including by keeping housing affordable. Some argued that zoning was essential to preserve Houston’s character, and that nonzoned land would allow single-family homes to be overrun by high-density housing; however, these fears proved unjustified.

• Mises Institute: “How Zoning Rules Would Work in a Free Society” (2009 Jun 17)

This Mises Institute article explains how neighbors can exercise their rights to both property and contract to establish private restrictive covenants, which achieve zoning-like benefits without the detriments of subjugating individual land rights to municipal central plans, which plans too-often serve the interests of politicians over the interests of people.

• Mises Institute: “Zoning Laws Destroy Communities” (2010 Apr 30)

This Mises Institute article explains how zoning harms neighborhoods by destroying their sense of community, ruining their neighborhood schools, increasing traffic congestion and its resultant air pollution, impeding their residents’ prosperity while facilitating their poverty, replacing reliance upon ourselves with reliance upon politicians, and allowing crime.

• Deseret News: “Utahns revere the Constitution — except in zoning” (2014 Sep 05)

This Deseret News editorial asserts that zoning ordinances violate both God-given rights (especially property rights) and Constitutional law, which means that it’s hypocritical for so many Utahns to uphold zoning while simultaneously claiming to revere the U. S. Constitution—and that it’s immoral for us to exert control over land that we don’t own.

• FEE: “How Deregulating Real Estate Markets Can Solve America’s Shortage of Affordable Housing” (2021 Apr 10)

This FEE article asserts that zoning people’s land is immoral in principle, that communist experiments in both Russia and China have proven the folly of socializing land, and that abolishing zoning would render housing far more affordable (as exemplified by abolishing similar Progressive Era regulations over both telecommunications and airlines).