Zoning is the key to understanding Seattle housing. Here are the basics
Zoning can be a bit of a snoozer. It’s a wonky topic with a high learning curve thanks to lots of legalese and acronyms — HALA! MHA! TOD! But getting a handle on it can help us get smarter about something pretty critical: how our city grows.
“Education is so important along land use,” says Laura Loe, who founded the Share The Cities advocacy group, “because then you know the levers of power around your community [so you can] make a difference.”
Here are the very basics to help us wrap our heads around this complex subject.
What is zoning, exactly, and what does it do?
Zoning tells us how tall and what kind of buildings are allowed to be in different parts of the city and what they can be used for.
In Seattle, there are five main levels of zoning: single-family residential, multi-family residential, mixed-use (think apartments above a corner store), commercial, and industrial.
Seattle passed its first zoning codes in 1923 and, in an update in 1957, laid the groundwork for our current land use rules. (Learn more about that history on Crosscut and Sightline.) There haven’t been many changes to Seattle’s zoning — until last year. That’s when a judge ruled that local leaders could move forward with a big plan to “upzone” parts of 27 neighborhoods across our city.
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