page_title: Zoning
section_title: Form-based zoning
hierarchical_section_title: Zoning / Types / Form-based zoning
caption_attribution_description: Eiffel Tower from the Tour Montparnasse, Paris.
context_page_description: Zoning is a method of urban planning in which a municipality or other tier of government divides land into areas called zones, within which certain land uses are permitted or prohibited. Zones may be defined for a single use, or may combine several compatible uses.
  Planning rules may be defined differently for each zone, determining whether planning permission for a given development may be granted. Zoning may specify a variety of outright and conditional uses of land. It may indicate the size and dimensions of lots that land may be subdivided into, or the form and scale of buildings. These guidelines are set in order to guide urban growth and development.
  Zoning is the most common regulatory urban planning method used by local governments in developed countries. Exceptions include the United Kingdom and the City of Houston.
context_section_description: Form-based zoning regulates not the type of land use, but the form that land use may take. For instance, form-based zoning in a dense area may insist on low setbacks, high density, and pedestrian accessibility. Form-based codes (FBCs) are designed to directly respond to the physical structure of a community in order to create more walkable and adaptable environments.
  The French planning system is mostly form-based; zoning codes in French cities generally allow many types of uses. The key differences between zones are based on the density of each use on a site. For example, a residential zone may have the same permissible uses as a mixed use zone. However, the proportion of non-residential uses in the residential zone would be less than in the mixed use zone.
  The city of Paris has used its zoning system to concentrate high density office buildings in the district of La Défense rather than allow heritage buildings across the city to be demolished to make way for them, as is often the case in London or New York. The construction of the  Montparnasse Tower in 1973 led to an outcry. As a result, two years after its completion the construction of buildings over seven storeys high in the city centre was banned.
caption: Paris, looking towards the high density district of La Défense.
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