Zoning—What Is It (and Why Should I Care)?

The other day, a friend told me she wanted to build an addition to her house. She didn’t think she could, though. A neighbor had told her that the town would not allow it because it would make the house’s footprint too big.

“What zoning district do you live in?” I asked.

She looked at me blankly. “What’s a zoning district?” she said.

Do you know what zoning district you live in? Do you know how many zoning districts we have in Swarthmore?

If not, you’re not alone.

When I first moved to Swarthmore, I didn’t know anything about zoning. It was only after my newly purchased garden shed was delivered on a flatbed truck that a next-door neighbor let me know you can’t put one right up against your property line.

A few years later, I started doing research for a novel revolving around a small-town real estate transaction. I went to the public library and asked if they had a copy of Swarthmore’s zoning code. They did.

The rest of that afternoon, I struggled with the code as though it were written in a language I’d taken in high school but never learned well. I sort of got it, but I knew I was missing a lot. Since then, I’ve read the code from start to finish (half an hour a day for a few weeks), taken a zoning administration class from the Pennsylvania Municipal Planning Education Institute, and served on the borough’s Zoning Hearing Board. For a non-professional, I understand zoning pretty well. I think it would be great if more people understood it, too.

Zoning is how the government puts limits on what you can do on your own land and what your neighbors can do on theirs. The limits on house size, fence height, etc. are different depending on what zoning district you live in.

Some History

Before America’s first modern zoning laws were enacted in the early 1900s, you could build anything you wanted on your property: a log cabin or a marble castle, a pork-processing facility or a textile factory. Whatever it was, your neighbors would have to live with it. Indeed, one of the main reasons local governments embraced zoning was to protect people from having to live in the literal shadows of giant industrial buildings. That benefit helped persuade freedom-loving property owners to accept some constraints on what they could and could not do on their own land.

The kind of zoning we (mostly) have in this country is known as “Euclidean Zoning”—which is confusing, because it makes you think it has something to do with geometry. It does not. It’s named for Euclid, Ohio, the first town to have its zoning ordinance upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. That was in 1926. The court affirmed that a town could divide itself into zones: one for houses, one for shops, one for factories, and so on.

From there, zones proliferated, each one with different rules. Big cities have dozens of them. Even a town as small as Swarthmore has nine.

Race, Class, and Gender

In addition to protecting people from living near paint factories or commercial behemoths, there was another reason zoning codes were adopted: to exclude racial minorities from places White people lived, and to keep poor people out of wealthy neighborhoods. Likely as a way to exclude Chinese people, one early Los Angeles zoning law prohibited laundries and washhouses in certain neighborhoods. Soon after, cities like Baltimore, New Orleans, and Oklahoma City passed laws specifying which parts of the city people of different races could live in.

When the U.S. Supreme Court struck down race-based zoning in 1918, exclusion found different avenues, like deed covenants and redlining. In Swarthmore in the early decades of the 20th century, an informal agreement among White property owners prevented Blacks from moving beyond a few unpaved streets south of Yale Avenue, and as late as 1958 (as Sue Edwards has documented), the Swarthmore Friends Meeting was riven when a member family sought to sell their home to African Americans.

Although discrimination in housing was outlawed by the Fair Housing Act of 1968, America remains a largely segregated country. One reason is that there are lots of ways to keep poor people out of affluent neighborhoods, and—partly because of our history of housing discrimination—non-White people remain significantly poorer than White ones. For example, in the case that was the vehicle for the Supreme Court to uphold zoning, Village of Euclid, Ohio v. Ambler Realty Co. in 1926, the court maintained that apartment buildings were “mere parasites” on neighborhoods of single-family homes.

Indeed, zoning for single-family homes began to spread widely after the passage of the Fair Housing Act. Not only were apartment buildings often prohibited, so were duplexes and triplexes. (I personally have a soft spot for the triple-decker buildings with porches so common in and around Boston, where I used to live.)

Other new zoning laws decreed lot-size minimums so that new lots had to be big. In Connecticut, for example, 81% of the land is zoned for lots of at least one acre—and 50% have to be at least two acres. Especially in burgeoning suburbs, the imperative to build just one house on a big lot put a lot of housing beyond the reach of most Black people and other people of color. Housing segregation lived on.

Racial and class-based exclusion were not the only reasons zoning ordinances often required bigger lots. Many people aspire to the suburban ideal of a single-family house surrounded by enough space for privacy and a swing set for the kids (architectural historian Sonia Hirt calls this a “pastoral ideal” in her book Zoned in the U.S.A.). But it’s sobering to note how many of the zoning laws that enabled this were written as legal segregation came to an end.

Also sobering: the large role that car and gasoline companies played in selling the suburban ideal promoting new roads and neighborhoods far from city centers and train stations. The suburban ideal was good for profits.

This suburban vision and the zoning laws that enabled it were also influenced by a romantic idea of family. Hirt and urban policy writer Diana Lind (Brave New Home) both describe how big lots in the suburbs were seen as good for children, who would be protected from playing in dirty urban streets. Housewives, central to this scheme, were conceived of (and advertised as) reigning happily over neat suburban homes. Some of them may have felt that way, but for many women, new housing patterns exacerbated the epidemic of isolation and loneliness that Betty Friedan described in her 1963 classic The Feminine Mystique.

Alternative Ways to Zone

These days, many people are reconsidering Euclidean zoning. “Mixed-use zoning,” with houses and stores permitted on the same block, is one idea. “Transit-oriented zoning,” with housing clustered around train stations and bus stops, is another. Both of these approaches are designed to help people drive less and use less fossil fuels. Zoning can be an important tool to help fight climate change.

Some towns, cities, and states have reconsidered single-family zoning. As housing prices soar, Minneapolis, Oregon, and California have decided that the single-family-home lot has outlived its time. The idea is that the creation of the millions of new homes this country needs can’t be accomplished with just one home on every lot.

What’s Right for Swarthmore?

There are lots of reasons it might be time to reconsider zoning here in Swarthmore. For me, the rapid rise in housing prices—and the way that is changing our town—is a big one. So is the opportunity to redress some of the legacy of racial segregation in Swarthmore. So are environmental concerns.

What if we thought creatively about ways to use the land and buildings we have more efficiently? What if people could divide their house into two or three separate units to rent or sell? What if we permitted tiny houses in backyards or let people rent out apartments over their garages? What if people with large lots could subdivide them into two?

I don’t know which—if any—of these ideas might be right for Swarthmore. But I’m hoping that our community will seriously consider these and other possible innovations.

Learning about zoning will help you figure out if you can build an addition on your house. Maybe it will also inspire you to join the conversation about using zoning as a tool to make Swarthmore a more vibrant, just, and resilient community.

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Why I Love This Town but Worry About Its Future

Photo: Andy Shelter

Whenever I drive into Swarthmore, a peacefulness settles over me. Turning onto Juniata Avenue (or Swarthmore Avenue, or Hilldale, or Drew), I feel a sense of relief, like letting out a long-held breath. 

Partly it’s the trees. This is true in any season, whether they’re wearing their summer green or autumn gold, or standing bare-branched in winter, straight and gray and solemn as the Quakers who founded this town.

Partly, too, it’s the houses that calm me. I love the way the styles are jumbled together: brick colonial sitting companionably next to turreted Victorian, stucco bungalow next to shingled twin with porches facing politely in opposite directions. As you approach the center of town, small apartment complexes spread across grassy lots or rise up, four stories tall, close to the train station. One of my regular walks takes me past the large stone houses of Swarthmore Hills, another down along a winding road where clapboard houses hide in the woods, a third past a row of narrow twins in the historically Black neighborhood.

But mostly, of course, it’s the people who make the town what it is. 

As a newcomer 20 years ago, I first met locals while waiting on the corner for my older daughter’s school bus. I met them at the playground across the street, watching my younger daughter slide down the slide, and at our street’s annual block party. My near neighbors include a biologist, a computer-systems saleswoman, an EPA administrator, a high school English teacher, a county transportation administrator, and a social worker, along with stay-at-home parents and retirees. 

One of the things I’ve most loved about Swarthmore is the mix of people: Co-op cashiers, piano teachers, emergency room doctors, electricians, small business owners, young political staffers, post-doctoral fellows, travel agents, college professors, and all kinds of writers: novelists, journalists, children’s book authors, historians, and more than our fair share of poets.

But over the two decades I’ve lived here, I’ve seen the balance of people change. As prices in the real estate listings have grown ever more eye-popping, the cars beneath our street trees are more often BMWs than Toyotas. 

A College Town Without College Professors?

I loved this town even before I moved here. At the tail end of the twentieth century, my young family was living in a perfectly decent suburban house on a cul-de-sac in Delaware, where the streets were all named after towns in Connecticut. I knew we were lucky to live there, but I hated the sameness of the houses, their undersized windows punched into the vinyl siding, the excessive lawns with the occasional quick-growing Bradford pear. 

We had friends who lived in Swarthmore—45 minutes away—and we used to drive up sometimes and visit them in their small stone house. I was always sad to go home.

Then, Swarthmore College hired my husband, David, as an assistant professor. Thrilled, we bought a smallish house on a street at the edge of the town and began to settle in. We met other young faculty members and their families. We enrolled our girls in school and joined the swim club. Nostalgic for my Quaker high school days, I started attending the Friends meeting.

But if we had moved more recently, I doubt we would have been able to afford a house in Swarthmore.

Since the year 2000, when David joined the college faculty, only one new professor in his department has settled in Swarthmore. More recently, three new hires all bought houses elsewhere, commuting to the campus each day rather than becoming part of the community. The rising cost of real estate here wasn’t the only reason, but it was a hefty part. The town’s lack of diversity played a role too. Of course, given our country’s wealth gap (caused by decades of segregation), Swarthmore’s racial homogeneity (we’re about 85% White) is related to its cost.

Each time one of David’s colleagues bought a house in a different town, I felt sad. Not so much for them: there are lots of great places to live in the area. But for me—that they wouldn’t be my neighbors. For my community. A college town where college professors can’t or don’t want to live is troubling. 

The Pandemic Accelerator

Around that time, a friend who had rented an apartment in town for a dozen years started house hunting. Her family had long outgrown their two-and-a-half bedroom apartment. They’d been saving money and decided that 2020 would be the year they could afford to buy a place in town. 

Then the pandemic hit. Prices spiked. Bidding wars for houses became frenzies. 

“We waited too long,” my friend lamented. Despite strong family ties to the borough, she and her husband moved away, deciding to try their luck in a different state. They’ve been gone nine months now, and I miss her all the time. 

It wasn’t long before I heard another story like my friend’s. Then another. If apartment living works for you, Swarthmore has some reasonably priced rental options. But if you want to own your own place—build some equity, have a yard for your kids to run around in—that’s pretty tough. As I watched people I cared about move away—less affluent people who had brought their energy and creativity to our civic life—I felt as though I were witnessing the draining of some of Swarthmore’s quintessence.

Don’t misunderstand me: I’m not saying that rich people are any less interesting or less civically engaged or make less good neighbors than non-rich people. I don’t mean that.

But I do mean that I’d rather live among people who do a lot of different kinds of jobs, including the ones that don’t pay that much—who are of a range of races and live in a variety of family constellations—than to drift in a comfortable homogenous sea.

So I’ve decided to stop drifting and try to do something about it.

Doing Something

I know that the lack of reasonably priced housing is not just a Swarthmore problem. There’s an affordability crisis all over this country: you can find articles about it in the newspaper nearly every day. 

Mostly that’s terrible news. But it does mean that many communities are wrestling with the same problem and experimenting with a variety of approaches and solutions. There’s a lot to be learned from them. 

Over the last few months, I’ve helped organize a Task Force on Development and Affordability authorized by Swarthmore Borough Council, which will make recommendations to the council early next year. We’ll be talking to neighbors about their ideas, needs, and concerns, and delving into the trials and successes of other towns. I’ve already begun meeting with zoning experts and town planners in places where some approaches have been tried. 

I’m hopeful that—if we search—we can come up with ideas that will work here in Swarthmore, with our particular community, history, buildings, and people. 

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