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City of St. Louis
ZOning UPgrade (ZOUP)
A Modern Code to Meet the Moment
Zoning Section + Planning and Urban Design Agency of St. Louis
What is Covered?
The Code Diagnostic asks:
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What misalignments are there with the 2025 SLUP (Strategic Land Use Plan), both in terms of mapping and policy objectives?
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Given its age, how well is the zoning code meeting the economic, social and environmental challenges of today? Where is it falling short?
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How efficiently do zoning-related processes work in the City government? Where are there unnecessary bottlenecks or red tape?
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How accessible to the public is the zoning code? Does its complexity or lack of transparency result in unfair outcomes?
What is Not Covered?
The content of plans and policies outside of zoning. This includes the recently-approved SLUP, neighborhood plans, and historic districts, building codes and complete street plans. However, in some cases it will look the current zoning’s relationship with them.
Finer details, including the appropriateness of the specific zoning currently applied to individual lots across the City. The audit is intended to establish a broad analysis, although it makes use of representative examples.
The Code Diagnostic will not audit:
Summary of Key Findings
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Plan Implementation: The Strategic Land Use Plan (SLUP) lays out a new vision for the City, while neighborhood plans add specificity. However, the 1950s-era zoning code is in many ways at odds with these visions.
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Administrative Process: Current processes are highly inefficient and not transparent to the public. In addition, the zoning code document itself is hard to use.
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Use & Adjacencies: Problematic land use adjacencies are being allowed under the zoning code, potentially harming health and quality of life. They may also be standing in the way of other development opportunities.
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Built Environment: Built form and its relationship with the public realm is not adequately addressed.
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Equity: The City’s history of systemic injustice is being perpetuated through aspects of zoning.
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Climate Change Mitigation: The impacts of climate change are not sufficiently mitigated by zoning.
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Disaster Response: The City is not prepared to respond to natural disasters or other emergencies, with respect to zoning.
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Housing Affordability: The zoning code’s reliance on discretionary approvals, lack of affordability incentives, and approach to mapping may be restricting the provision of diverse, affordable options for housing.
Recommended Guiding Principles
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Follow the direction of the SLUP: In all cases, the direction of the 2025 SLUP and neighborhood plans, should be reflected.
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Fewer variances: The number of variances must be drastically reduced in the future to ensure predictability and smooth functioning of the system. This should be achieved both by improving the quality of the zoning districts and map, and by taking a more critical approach to variance requests.
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Pedestrian-friendly development by right; auto-oriented development restricted: New built form standards should require pedestrian-friendly and transit-supportive development in most parts of the City, while restricting auto-oriented development.
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Resilient to disaster, climate-related and otherwise: Tools should be incorporated for reducing the impacts of disasters, both preventively where possible, and in their aftermath.
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Push back against inequality: While zoning cannot single-handedly reverse the deep physical legacy of racial and class inequality in St. Louis, it must avoid perpetuating it.
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Make it user-friendly: The zoning code document, its standards and processes should be accessible and understandable by the general public, no special degrees required.
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Build in avenues for refinement and update: Not all aspects of any zoning code will get it right the first time. It must include opportunities for regular review and revision where needed.
Give Us Your Feedback
What else about the current zoning should the City and ZOUP team be aware of as they begin work on the new zoning code and map?