Major US cities
It’s the largest US city with no formal zoning code.
Houston, Texas
Traffic engineers grade roads A through F with this measure.
What is LOS (level of service)?
This person designed New York’s Central Park
Fredrick Law Olmsted
Named after a Supreme Court case, this system separates land into single-use districts.
What is Euclidean zoning?
This 1930s plan imagined spreading Americans across the countryside on one-acre homesteads linked by highways.
What is the broadacre city?
Known as the Motor City, it has lost more than 60% of its population since its 1950 peak.
Detroit, Michigan
Required for urban areas >50,000 people, these bodies coordinate federal transportation spending.
What is an MPO (Metropolitan Planning Organization)
Their 1961 book championed busy sidewalks and mixed-use neighborhoods.
Jane Jacobs
In most codes, an “R” district is zoned for this.
What is residential use?
Chicago’s “White City” at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition launched this movement of grand boulevards and neoclassical buildings.
What is the City Beautiful movement?
The Gateway Arch stands on the Mississippi River in this city.
St. Louis, Missouri
A homeowner who supports affordable housing, but shows up at a hearing to fight a project on their street.
What is a NIMBY (Not In My BackYard)
This “master builder” shaped New York, and also bulldozed many minority neighborhoods for urban renewal
Robert Moses
A building that was legal before the rules changed, but now breaks them.
Nonconforming use (grandfathered)
Seaside, Florida, with its front porches and walkable streets, became a poster child for this 1980s–90s movement.
What is New Urbanism?
William Penn’s 1682 plan for this city included a grid and five public squares.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
This tool pays for improvements in an area by locking a parcel's tax valuation for a set period
Their mass-produced suburb on Long Island became the model for postwar suburbia.
William Levitt
Instead of separating uses, these codes regulate building shape and how it meets the street.
this program cleared “blighted” neighborhoods, often displacing Black and low-income residents.
What is urban renewal?
In 1900, engineers reversed the flow of this city’s river to send sewage away from Lake Michigan.
Chicago, Illinois
Buildings earn Certified, Silver, Gold or Platinum ratings under this green building program.
What is LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)?
This person laid out Washington, DC's diagonal avenues and traffic circles in 1791.
Pierre L'Enfant
This kind of zone sits on top of the base zoning to add extra rules i.e. historic district or floodplain.
This plan proposed bulldozing much of central Paris to make way for these.
What are towers in a park?