Sara Bronin
Sara Bronin has personally witnessed the extremes in how zoning regulations shape the landscapes where people live and work.
A native of Houston, America’s largest city without formal zoning regulations, Bronin saw the effects of unregulated development on the neighborhood where she grew up.
“Looking across the street is a gas station, a self-storage facility, a nightclub and a large strip mall surrounded by a giant parking lot,” Bronin said. “I wouldn’t say those kinds of uses are fulfilling for a child growing up there today.”
In her professional career, Bronin taught law at University of Connecticut and served as Hartford Planning Board chair for seven years in a state where the vast majority of land is zoned for single-family homes.
The Yale-educated architect finds middle ground between the free market latitude of Houston and restrictive regulation of New England in her new book, “Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World,” released Oct. 1 by W.W. Norton & Co.
“For me, zoning has always been this fascinating but understudied aspect of law that affects virtually every American, yet few people actually recognize zoning’s power or understand how it works,” Bronin said in a phone call after returning from the first leg of her book tour in Charlottesville, Virginia this month.
Bronin’s influence now is being felt in Boston during the first city-wide rezoning process since the 1960s.
Bronin’s Influence in Boston
Mayor Michelle Wu tapped Bronin as a consultant to review the city’s zoning code with the goal of simplifying and modernizing the over 3,700-page document. In a 2023 report, Bronin recommended rezoning areas near public transit stops for higher-density development to encourage multifamily housing production.
The concepts are already being implemented through Boston’s “Squares + Streets” initiative, which this spring rezoned a portion of Mattapan for more by-right housing approvals, and is expected to issue recommendations on 16 other neighborhood districts. Rezoning studies and public engagement processes are under way in Roslindale Square, Hyde Park’s Cleary Square, and Dorchester’s Fields Corners, Codman Square and Four Corners neighborhoods.
A professor of architecture and planning at Cornell University, Bronin is making the rounds of East Coast college towns this fall promoting her book, which adds to a growing national debate on how zoning can perpetuate inequality and contribute to higher housing costs.
In 2021, California legislators enacted a law that allows homeowners to subdivide single-family lots for up to four homes, subject to a 1,200-square-foot lot minimum. In April, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled the law unconstitutional, placing its enactment in doubt.
But eliminating single-family zoning is only one ingredient in the housing production recipe, Bronin said, along with increases in maximum building height and density. One of the most successful zoning reforms for housing production has been legalization of accessory dwelling units, or backyard cottages, in single-family zones, Bronin said.
In August, Massachusetts legalized ADU’s on a statewide basis as a provision of the Affordable Homes Act.
Bronin calls upon “good and bad examples” of zoning policies in cities including Las Vegas, Tucson, Baltimore and Delray Beach, Florida. Baltimore successfully added mixed-use zoning to encourage redevelopment of a former industrial district, she said.
“In general, the book advocates for a broader mix of uses rather than what we too often see, which is single-family zoning,” Bronin said.
