The Experience of Racial and Ethnic Minorities with Zoning in the United States

To date, scholars have examined two common effects of zoning that disproportionately impact racial and ethnic minorities in the United States: (1) exclusionary effects, resulting from zoning’s erection of direct, discriminatory barriers or indirect, economic barriers to geographic mobility; and (2) intensive and expulsive effects, resulting from zoning’s disproportionate targeting of minority residential neighborhoods for commercial and industrial development. In light of recent legal and federal policy developments, continued research is needed to better understand the scale of the gap between the treatment of white and minority communities and to better understand how zoning can reverse past injustices.