One Berkeley Resident s Fight to Desegregate the City
Dorothy Walker has spent decades working to eliminate housing discrimination. In February, the city council finally agreed. April 1, 2021, 9am PDT | Diana Ionescu |
Nathanael Johnson profiles Dorothy Walker, a Berkeley resident who, decades ago, undertook a fight against racist real estate covenants. As a white woman married to a Japanese-American, Walker witnessed the effects of internment and race-based policies in mid-century America, policies which reverberate to this day.
Despite federal efforts to eliminate housing segregation in the early 20th century, writes Johnson, cities found new ways to replace explicitly racist covenants with ordinances that entrenched segregation by income and wealth instead, reserving certain parts of town for people who could afford their own house and a roomy yard. Walker has proposed eliminating single-family zoning for decades, but her proposals have always fallen on deaf ears. I wa
A proposed package of reforms working through the Connecticut Legislature would loosen zoning codes in a state traditionally committed to single-family zoning.
Upzoning Catches on in California
Eliminating single-family zoning and other exclusionary ordinances could have major impacts on housing in some of the country s most unaffordable cities. March 8, 2021, 8am PST | Diana Ionescu |
California cities are joining a national trend to use upzoning as a tool to increase housing affordability, make neighborhoods more accessible to more people, and fight climate change and urban sprawl. Most recently, the city of Berkeley, the birthplace of single-family zoning in the United States, voted to eliminate exclusionary zoning policies and reform the city’s general plan with the aim to eliminate widespread bans on apartments and multi-unit residences.
Home-Based Businesses Could Save the Post-Pandemic Economy
Seattle s city council considers reducing arbitrary and exclusionary limits on home-based businesses. March 8, 2021, 10am PST | Diana Ionescu |
In California, the humble garage-based business has been elevated to the level of myth by the Silicon Valley giants who tout their early, heady startup days working out of their home garages. With the pandemic causing tectonic shifts in how and where we work, writes Ray Dubicki in The Urbanist, garage businesses provide one more lifeline for struggling entrepreneurs and small businesses. Yet in some cities, outdated zoning codes prevent many businesses from being legally conducted in homes. In Seattle, zoning code excludes all sorts of uses throughout the 75% of the city that’s strictly zoned for single-family detached homes. The concept of home occupations, activists argue, is outdated and harmful to both small businesses and the vibrancy of neighborhoods.
Ending single-family zoning, as more cities around the United States have begun to do, is too extreme a response to contemporary planning challenges, according to a recent opinion piece published by the East Bay Times.