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The Complete Guide to Zoning: How to Navigate the Complex and Expensive Maze of Zoning, Planning, Environmental, and Land-Use Law

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The Complete Guide to Zoning
By Dwight H. Merriam, FAICP, CRE
Review by Donald J. Poland, AICP

As planners, we tend to take the complexities of zoning and the land-use approval process for granted. Zoning is complicated system of government regulations that impact property rights and property values and more importantly the lives of any person who owns real estate. Dwight H. Merriam, in his new book, "The Complete Guide to Zoning" has successfully written a comprehensive account of zoning and the zoning game. Similar to Chris Matthews' book, Hardball, an insider's look at how the game of politics in played inside the Washington beltway, The Complete Guide to Zoning provides insiders look at how the zoning game is played. With over 25 year's experiences in planning and land use law, Dwight provides many lessons learned through his own experiences.

The Complete Guide to Zoning is formatted into six sections, "What is Zoning and Land-Use Law," "Getting Ready to Make Your Move," "Putting On Your Case," "Posthearing Follow-Up," "Winning Strategies," and "Protecting Your Property Rights." In a plain English and conversational voice, the book walks the reader through the basic law associated with zoning, the complex land-use approval process, and how to get what you want need out of zoning. From a variance for a backyard pool to developing a major expansion to a regional mall, The Complete Guide to Zoning shows the reader how zoning works and how to get the most out of your property and/or project.

While the book provides mostly a developer's perspective (the applicant seeking an approval), it also provides a unique insight and lessons to be learned by the neighbors or opposition groups who want to protect their properties and their rights. Most importantly, The Complete Guide to Zoning emphasizes the important of good communication between all parties, realizing that all or none approaches may not get either party what they want, and that all efforts should be made to avoid litigation.

Dwight's experience and perspective provides insight and understanding to the neophyte or layman, while reaffirming what the seasoned planner, engineer, or land-use attorney knows. We have all been involved in those applications that appear bigger than life and become more than just a job or an approval, but personal parts of ourselves. Be it as the developer who wants the 12-lot subdivision approval, the neighborhood who is fearful of increased traffic on their street, or the planner who has assisted the commission in drafting a new regulation, we all have been personally vested in the outcome of a zoning decision. Dwight reminds us that, "To be successful in resolving these disputes, you need to leave your ego at home. Whether you are the developer, the property owner, the leader of the neighborhood group, the lawyer, or the engineer, it is never about you. It is about land, the objective is developing or saving it, and zoning."

The Complete Guide to Zoning is a must read for anyone who owns real property or is involved in zoning. From the neighbor to the developer, the engineer to the architect, the commission member to the zoning official, the planning student to the veteran planner, this book should be on your desk, night table and available in the planning office and/or local library for applicants to read. The time spent reading "The Complete Guide to Zoning" will save any applicant from many frustrating hours of trying to figure out the land use approval process and weeks if not months of time in gaining a zoning approval. As we all know, saving time saves money and when it comes to development and zoning, time is money.

And last, I assure anyone who reads this book, when you are done reading it you will want to say, "Dwight, you magnificent bastard!" (An inside joke you'll get in reading the book.)

The Complete Guide To Zoning: How Real Estate Owners and Developers Can Create and Preserve Property Value is a no-nonsense guide to understanding what zoning is and how to use it to protect one's property rights and interests. Zoning and Land-Use Law controls what can be done with land and how it can be developed; The Complete Guide To Zoning offers the lay reader a very short course in the law, the importance of knowing what one has, what one wants, and how to get it, the value of creating and leveraging relationships, when to reach out for support, preparing winning applications and making successful presentations, strategies for winning zoning battles, and much more. Chapters give equal focus to pursuing one's desire to develop land commercially, or the desire to see that adjoining lands to one's residential area are not developed commercially. Written in plain terms, The Complete Guide To Zoning is highly accessible regardless of the reader's legal background, and a "must-read" for property owners everywhere.

What makes this fabulous book unique is that rather than focusing just on the law of zoning or just on the politics of same, Merriam does both- and in language that a nonlawyer can understand. He writes not just about the basics of zoning procedure, but also about how to assemble experts and present your case in a way likely to persuade a zoning board or city council.

In addition, Merriam's work contains some inadvertent clues as to why most American neighborhoods and suburbs are so sprawling and expensive. State and local laws typically require that an attempt to rezone property must be accompanied by some form of notice to neighbors- and so to get government approval, a developer must get neighbors' approval.

And to get that approval, developers must often change their plans in ways that increase the price of housing, make neighborhoods less walkable, or both. For example:

*The neighbors might be worried about traffic congestion. So the developer tries to appease them by widening the roads on its property, thus making that subdivision a scarier place to walk (and also reducing the amount of land available for housing).

*The neighbors might be worried about density. So the developer has to reduce the units in its subdivision, thus reducing housing supply.

*And sometimes, the developer has to just give something to neighborhood groups, essentially bribing them for permission to build. For example, Merriam points out that he sometimes has bought neighborhood goodwill by offering to pay a neighborhood group's lawyers and experts. He also suggests other little payoffs, such as setting aside open space for a neighborhood. I suspect that at least some of these costs are passed on to home buyers.

This book is a great overview of zoning. It gives you the basics -- all of them, but it is definitely for people who know very little about zoning. If you are finding yourself in your first zoning battle, make this your first book. If you already have a general understanding of zoning and its processes, then you already know everything in this book.

Whether or not you will absolutely love this book or find it a waste of money is dependent entirely on your level of knowledge and what you are looking for. This is perfect for those who are just learning about zoning or those who need to brush up.

As the Director of Planning and Development for a mid sized city in CT for the last 16 years, I highly reccomend this book. All planners and developers should read it.

The book really is a complete guide to zoning. A great primer for anyone starting on their first development or zoning project; but also helpful to those of us already working in the field who come across new and interesting challenges.