The Public Health Roots of Zoning

A lot of people bag on zoning as a major culprit in sprawl. What many of them either don't realize or take for granted is that in its early days (c.WWI) it was a major land use reform. Zoning prevented nuisance or polluting activites from taking place near residential housing (and vice versa), stabilizing the market value of land earmarked for each, and went a long way to protecting people from being poisoned or nuisanced out of their homes.

But like most regulations, it's had its unintended consequences. Metropolitan Institute fellow Joe Schilling and Leslie Linton of SDSU explore explore some of these side effects, and the prospects for legislative remedies, in a new article in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine (link via Planetizen)