Zoning Education for Communities
Zoning Practice — December 2016
By Joseph DeAngelis, AICP
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Zoning is complicated. It's complicated for residents, elected officials, administrators, developers, and architects. It's even complicated for planners not regularly steeped in the plan review or development process. Putting aside the intricacies of zoning as a concept, local zoning itself requires specialized knowledge, fine analytical skills, and big-picture understanding. Planners must understand the zoning code, the zoning map, the local development process, and how the three relate to each other.
A Zoning 101 presentation as part of your outreach can help to educate the public, elected officials, staff, and other stakeholders on the very basics of zoning and your city's code, maps, and development process. A short presentation, meeting, or forum on zoning basics and your local code and maps can be an extraordinarily useful primer for residents, elected officials, developers, or other city staff and can servie as a bulwark against the community pushback that arises out of confusion.
This issue of Zoning Practice discusses how planners can use a Zoning 101 presentation to help educate community members about zoning basics. It highlights various contexts where a zoning primer may be helpful, summarizes the needs of potentially distinct audience segments, and suggests an overall structure for the presentation.
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About the Author
Joseph DeAngelis, AICP
Joe DeAngelis, AICP, is a planner and research manager at the American Planning Association, where he manages projects on climate adaptation, natural hazard risk, and community resilience. Joe has co-authored a variety of publications while at APA, including the 2020 Planning Advisory Service Report “Planning for Infrastructure Resilience” and since 2021, APA’s annual Trend Report. Joe is also the co-author of the upcoming report “Exploratory Scenario Planning for Hazard Mitigation and Climate Adaptation.” Before coming to APA in 2016, Joe worked as a Resilience Planner for the New York City Department of City Planning, where he focused on post-Hurricane Sandy recovery and long-term redevelopment. He holds a Master of Urban Planning degree from CUNY-Hunter College.