Connecticut Zoning Atlas
March 21, 2021 3:23 PM Subscribe
The Zoning Atlas is a first-in-the-nation interactive map showing how all 2,620 zoning districts and 2 subdivision districts in Connecticut treat housing. With a total of 32,378 pages of regulations read and analyzed, the Zoning Atlas is cumulative and illuminating. This type of project has never been done before on a statewide basis.
Propublica on zoning in Connecticut: Separated by Design: How Some of America’s Richest Towns Fight Affordable Housing .
posted by rockindata at 4:56 PM on March 21, 2021
posted by rockindata at 4:56 PM on March 21, 2021
I went and looked at the podunk town I grew up in in north-central CT, and yup, it's exactly what I expected: single-family zoning as far as the eye can see. It even adds an extra level of ratfuckery with frontage requirements--if you have ten acres of land, but most of it doesn't adjoin a road, you're out of luck if you want to build anything denser than a single-family house, because the Norman-Rockwell-aspirational zoning board has decreed that every home needs its own 200 feet of linear footage adjoining a public throughway. Otherwise you might get subdivisions of old farmland, and where there are subdivisions, multi-family zoning can't be far behind.
You will be shocked to learn that my high school's graduating class did not include a person of African descent.
Fun aside: the house where I grew up is on one of those weird lots (200' of street frontage, but the streets are so far apart that a "block" is a mile or more, so the lot itself is 5 acres but can't be legally subdivided). My father and grandfather, in proud conservative tradition, decided the rules didn't apply to them, and went ahead and built another house on the lot anyway. They got away with it by calling it an "auxiliary building" or some other such legal fiction that immediately got written out of the town bylaws after they did it, and my grandparents lived in the house next door for thirty years before they died. Now the thing is the mother of all albatrosses: they can't legally subdivide the land, so they can't sell the second house because it would require a zoning variance to come into legal existence as its own house, and the board that issues variances is made up of a bunch of cranky old white guys who still remember when my grandfather gave them the runaround in 1982. So my parents continue to kick the ontological can down the road, no doubt until my sister and I have to deal with small-town Connecticut's legal vagaries from far away.
posted by Mayor West at 5:56 PM on March 21, 2021 [8 favorites]
You will be shocked to learn that my high school's graduating class did not include a person of African descent.
Fun aside: the house where I grew up is on one of those weird lots (200' of street frontage, but the streets are so far apart that a "block" is a mile or more, so the lot itself is 5 acres but can't be legally subdivided). My father and grandfather, in proud conservative tradition, decided the rules didn't apply to them, and went ahead and built another house on the lot anyway. They got away with it by calling it an "auxiliary building" or some other such legal fiction that immediately got written out of the town bylaws after they did it, and my grandparents lived in the house next door for thirty years before they died. Now the thing is the mother of all albatrosses: they can't legally subdivide the land, so they can't sell the second house because it would require a zoning variance to come into legal existence as its own house, and the board that issues variances is made up of a bunch of cranky old white guys who still remember when my grandfather gave them the runaround in 1982. So my parents continue to kick the ontological can down the road, no doubt until my sister and I have to deal with small-town Connecticut's legal vagaries from far away.
posted by Mayor West at 5:56 PM on March 21, 2021 [8 favorites]
It's not really surprising, but it is impressive to see how much of the state is covered with large-lot single family zoning, versus how little is available for multi-family.
This is a really interesting project, thank you for posting it.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:18 PM on March 21, 2021 [1 favorite]
This is a really interesting project, thank you for posting it.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:18 PM on March 21, 2021 [1 favorite]
Not only does it make affordable housing much more difficult but the "banana" (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything) rules also make walkable communities nearly impossible since it guarantees that car ownership is required for first-class citizenship.
posted by drstrangelove at 3:26 AM on March 22, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by drstrangelove at 3:26 AM on March 22, 2021 [7 favorites]
The Atlantic did a write up of CT's woes a few years back. Their conclusion - main problem is, revitalizing the cities. The founder of the current study is married to the mayor of Hartford, for whom housing has been an issue for some time.
posted by BWA at 6:07 AM on March 22, 2021
posted by BWA at 6:07 AM on March 22, 2021
Connecticut is a weird state - the vast majority may be single family zoning, but Connecticut is way more dense than the vast majority of US cities, and as uniformly dense (even though total populations are very low) as places like Los Angeles.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:48 AM on March 22, 2021
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:48 AM on March 22, 2021
Connecticut is way more dense than the vast majority of US cities
I don't see how you figure. CT is dense, at 738 per square mile, but not that dense. Lot of green acres once you get out of Fairfield county.
posted by BWA at 9:22 AM on March 22, 2021 [1 favorite]
I don't see how you figure. CT is dense, at 738 per square mile, but not that dense. Lot of green acres once you get out of Fairfield county.
posted by BWA at 9:22 AM on March 22, 2021 [1 favorite]
I mean the cities within the state, not counting undeveloped open land.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:48 AM on March 22, 2021
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:48 AM on March 22, 2021
Connecticut is way more dense than the vast majority of US cities
I have no love for the nutmeg state, but I also fail to see why CT is exceptional here. I guess it's just that someone went to the trouble to catalog it. It's a nice project, but I don't think a second helping of grar is due to their land use practices.
- Zoning is codified by local politics and national standards; states have very little to do with it
- CT is pretty dense and top 5 in median income, so it's not like it's doing awful
- I bet it was a fun problem to put together this map-based interface, but it's clunky to load and looks like a Pollock painting
This whole thing would be more persuasive to me if they did a better job of illustrating how market pressures (along with political biases) inform what's feasible to build in different types of geography and then to show how zoning enables or constrains that activity.
super hot topic locally right now
Totally. But one of the things that is easy to miss is how much zoning doesn't really solve problems like a shortage of housing. If denser housing is allowed to be build, typically what you get in areas that see substantive growth is high end construction. This creates a composition problem and the people who are in need of housing aren't any closer to getting it. Even when a region is 'successful' in this way, the proportional increase in the supply of housing (which would allow a trickle down of affordability) is a small% regardless of the number of units.
The three headed hydra of urban housing is:
1) Yes, nimbyism / racism
2) Lack of public funding / rabid financialization of real property as an asset
3) (Speaking for the US here...) An economic model that incentivizes sprawl
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 10:34 AM on March 22, 2021
I have no love for the nutmeg state, but I also fail to see why CT is exceptional here. I guess it's just that someone went to the trouble to catalog it. It's a nice project, but I don't think a second helping of grar is due to their land use practices.
- Zoning is codified by local politics and national standards; states have very little to do with it
- CT is pretty dense and top 5 in median income, so it's not like it's doing awful
- I bet it was a fun problem to put together this map-based interface, but it's clunky to load and looks like a Pollock painting
This whole thing would be more persuasive to me if they did a better job of illustrating how market pressures (along with political biases) inform what's feasible to build in different types of geography and then to show how zoning enables or constrains that activity.
super hot topic locally right now
Totally. But one of the things that is easy to miss is how much zoning doesn't really solve problems like a shortage of housing. If denser housing is allowed to be build, typically what you get in areas that see substantive growth is high end construction. This creates a composition problem and the people who are in need of housing aren't any closer to getting it. Even when a region is 'successful' in this way, the proportional increase in the supply of housing (which would allow a trickle down of affordability) is a small% regardless of the number of units.
The three headed hydra of urban housing is:
1) Yes, nimbyism / racism
2) Lack of public funding / rabid financialization of real property as an asset
3) (Speaking for the US here...) An economic model that incentivizes sprawl
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 10:34 AM on March 22, 2021
But one of the things that is easy to miss is how much zoning doesn't really solve problems like a shortage of housing. If denser housing is allowed to be build, typically what you get in areas that see substantive growth is high end construction. This creates a composition problem and the people who are in need of housing aren't any closer to getting it.
I see this repeated a lot, but I don't think it's true historically. I mean, mass developers built affordable housing across most of the US for 50 solid years; them not doing so is a really recent occurrence mostly due to bad government policy and decades of poor zoning. Even then, 'brand new' housing was a luxury good, and older housing trickled down. Brand new always has to amortize the land costs at present value, and thus is luxury compared to older buildings.
In ye olden days, they could build housing at 50k units per year. Houston for example still does, and doesn't have particularly expensive housing, even though everything has tradeoffs and some of their land use policies are terrible.
Speaking specifically of Connecticut cities (and not Houston or Phoenix, where the tradeoffs are arguably not worth it and higher prices might be a good thing vs endless sprawl), Connecticut is so dense that some sprawl or different land use zoning decisions (around parking for example) would probably be a good thing and ease housing costs. The net total number of people in the majority of the cities are so low that it wouldn't take much to swing housing prices downwards in a good way.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:05 AM on March 22, 2021 [1 favorite]
I see this repeated a lot, but I don't think it's true historically. I mean, mass developers built affordable housing across most of the US for 50 solid years; them not doing so is a really recent occurrence mostly due to bad government policy and decades of poor zoning. Even then, 'brand new' housing was a luxury good, and older housing trickled down. Brand new always has to amortize the land costs at present value, and thus is luxury compared to older buildings.
In ye olden days, they could build housing at 50k units per year. Houston for example still does, and doesn't have particularly expensive housing, even though everything has tradeoffs and some of their land use policies are terrible.
Speaking specifically of Connecticut cities (and not Houston or Phoenix, where the tradeoffs are arguably not worth it and higher prices might be a good thing vs endless sprawl), Connecticut is so dense that some sprawl or different land use zoning decisions (around parking for example) would probably be a good thing and ease housing costs. The net total number of people in the majority of the cities are so low that it wouldn't take much to swing housing prices downwards in a good way.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:05 AM on March 22, 2021 [1 favorite]
I mean the population of Hartford is in the 120k population range, that's small.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:07 AM on March 22, 2021
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:07 AM on March 22, 2021
don't think it's true historically
I agree with you here. But the conditions that enabled this are no longer present in urban areas. You can still build 'middle class' housing in the sticks, but the relative inflation of soft and hard costs don't allow it in more developed areas.
This isn't to say it's impossible. Far from it.
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 4:06 AM on March 23, 2021
I agree with you here. But the conditions that enabled this are no longer present in urban areas. You can still build 'middle class' housing in the sticks, but the relative inflation of soft and hard costs don't allow it in more developed areas.
This isn't to say it's impossible. Far from it.
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 4:06 AM on March 23, 2021
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This is a super hot topic locally right now; I'm going to only add a little fact stuff that may help people understand the data better, especially for people outside New England: Connecticut does not have counties for any real use, nor unincorporated territories that are administered remotely. Everyone is a resident of a town, or the city; if you leave a town you immediately end up in the next one. Other states in New England also use the New England town model but have their own quirks.
What I'm not gonna do is link the local paper articles on Greenwich vs New Haven on blatantly calling zoning racist, because the local papers allow comments, and we all know what that looks like.
posted by cobaltnine at 4:39 PM on March 21, 2021 [3 favorites]