HOW DO I FIND MY ZONING?

Districts, codes, and counties

Obtaining zoning information is challenging. Separate zoning regulations can exist at the neighborhood, district, city, county, and state levels.

The zoning rules can be completely different at each level and understanding the order of precedence is crucial. This is determining who has jurisdictional authority.

Understanding your property's jurisdictional authority is the first step toward determining your zoning.

Once you understand the jurisdictions, you next have to contend with the text itself. The zoning code text is written in language that is difficult to understand.

The zoning text is complicated. They are literally codes; thousands of pages full of acronyms, specialized terms, tables, charts, diagrams, and other jargon.

Zoning guides

Therefore, it’s helpful to have a guide to make sure you are getting up-to-date, authoritative, and complete zoning information.

That is what UrbanForm is providing here.

How to do a zoning analysis

Essentially, there are 3 ways to find the zoning information you need to start any design, construction, or land valuation work.

Hire a local professional (i.e., architect, contractor, land-use attorney)
Use UrbanForm
Do it yourself

There are valid reasons to do any of the above. Depending on how you value your time, your pre-existing familiarity with the codes, and other factors, one method may be best for a particular set of circumstances.

Zoning software

In developing UrbanForm for each city, we've spent a lot of time making sure we get the best, most authoritative, and most up-to-date information possible.

We've done the research and partnered with architects and developers in each jurisdiction to make sure that our results are meaningful and useful.

And then UrbanForm has automated that process, using software to eliminate the searching, reading, drafting, calculating, and rote work typically required.

Zoning maps by address

By doing so, UrbanForm has made this process nearly instantaneous and extremely low-cost. UrbanForm has created interactive online maps to serve this information for UrbanForm's customers, for whom timely, efficient, accurate, and verifiable zoning information is the backbone of their professional work.

But there are many for whom doing it themselves may be their best option.

We've already documented the best sources and methods for obtaining the zoning information, so we can share it here for those interested.

This guide is for those who wish to figure out how best to get the zoning information they need in the cities for which UrbanForm is available.