An Economic History of Zoning and a Cure for its Exclusionary Effects

The paper outlines the 20th-century history of American zoning to explain how home-owners came to dominate its content and administration in most jurisdictions. Zoning's original purpose was to protect home-owners in residential areas from devaluation by industrial and apartment uses that had been made footloose by trucks and buses around 1910-20. Completion of the interstate highway system around 1970 made jobs and employees so mobile that suburbs adopted growth controls to stem the tide. If zoning is indeed a substitute for home-value insurance, it seems worthwhile to investigate the possibility of home-equity insurance to reduce the demand for exclusionary zoning.