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The Relaxed Zoning Overlay: <br />A Tool for Addressing the Property Vacancy Cycle <br />By Stephen Pantalone and Justin B. Hollander, AICP <br />The relaxed zoning overlay (RZO) is a planning tool for municipalities anticipating <br />declining populations, either communitywide or within individual neighborhoods. <br />All images by Justin Hollander <br />This partially boarded -up building in Flint, Michigan, sits nextto a vacant lot <br />overrun with vegetation. <br />Significant population decline may lead to <br />an excess supply of residential, commercial, <br />or industrial structures, and evidence has <br />shown that even a small concentration of <br />vacant property brings a host of economic <br />and social problems. <br />The purpose of the RZO is to mitigate <br />these impacts by anticipating decline and <br />adapting the property supply in a given <br />community. For example, if a residential <br />neighborhood is consistently losing popu- <br />lation, there will be a point at which the <br />housing supply exceeds housing demand. <br />At this point housing prices in these neigh- <br />borhoods will begin to fall along with the <br />respective property's profitability. Without <br />the prospect of recovery, the continued <br />maintenance of the residential property <br />may become economically burdensome to <br />owners. However, in such circumstances <br />there may be a demand for other uses that <br />are not currently zoned, such as cold stor- <br />age facilities or agricultural uses. Currently, <br />the inflexibility of zoning restricts the ability <br />of communities to quickly react to decline <br />by expanding the legally allowable uses of <br />property. In the example above, the property <br />will remain restricted to a residential use <br />despite falling housing prices and may ulti- <br />mately become derelict and abandoned — <br />blighting the surrounding neighborhood. <br />The RZO addresses this issue by expanding <br />the list of by -right uses in a given community <br />when it faces declining residential demand, <br />thereby providing owners the flexibility to <br />adapt their properties to a use that will con- <br />tinue to be productive. <br />The RZO concept is a combination of a <br />normal zoning overlay and an urban growth <br />boundary (UGB). It is similar to a UGB in that <br />it relies on a trigger mechanism designed <br />through a planning process. And, like other <br />overlays, the RZO sits on top of the underly- <br />ing zoning. The RZO is triggered when the <br />vacancy rate in the respective community <br />reaches a certain level, and once it is acti- <br />vated, expands the scope of permitted uses. <br />The RZO concept was introduced in <br />Justin Hollander's Sunburnt Cities, and is <br />part of a larger body of scholarly research <br />on planning for decline. The research has <br />focused primarily on Rust Belt cities with <br />large inventories of vacant property. It has <br />taken decades for some cities to develop <br />regulatory and market tools to acquire and <br />demolish or reuse these properties. There is <br />now evidence that some of the Sun Belt cit- <br />ies that have seen staggering growth in the <br />last several decades are also facing decline. <br />The RZO offers a prospective tool for these <br />cities and others to curtail and even take <br />advantage of decline. This is accomplished <br />by keeping property in use and improving <br />ZONINGPRACTICE 9.11 <br />AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIATION Ipage 2 <br />