Avoid Spot Zoning
To Be Seen as Fair
Spot zoning refers to applying the map portion of a municipal zoning ordinance to a particular parcel of land without regard to its surroundings. That's a bad thing, not a good thing.
Because the courts frown on it so much, neighbors who don't like a particular rezoning proposal are likely to throw around this accusatory term. That's a judgment call, but it's a conclusion that the governing bodies of the city or county establishing the ordinance have to make.
It's time for examples. If you want to plunk down commercial zoning on a residential lot that is situated mid-block in a subdivision, that sure sounds like a spot zoning in almost all conceivable circumstances.
Let's make it a little harder. What if this is a development influenced by new urbanism and the mixed-use concept, and the proposed commercial lot is at the end of the block, instead of in the middle? What if there are architectural controls or urban design standards that would limit the mass, height, setbacks, and appearance of the building to the same standards that would apply to a house? Since true new urbanist developments are based on codes other than conventional zoning, that's pretty unlikely. But if you had such an event, you wouldn't have a clear-cut case of spot zoning.
What Can You Do About a Bad Land Use Planning Decision?
If you think a poor planning decision is coming to your neighborhood, mobilize and organize your neighbors. That's the most effective thing you can do.
I hope you're seeing this isn't a scientific or empirical concept that we citizens can demonstrate; it's subjective.
Why Do Courts React Negatively?
Courts rule against spot zoning, when they believe it exists, based on two ideas:
• Fundamental fairness. Often the suspicion is that perhaps the person seeking the change is a friend of some decision-maker or is owed a political favor. Or perhaps just is an influential person around town.
• The strong legal nexus (connection) between land use planning and zoning. The ordinance is legally defensible to the extent it is based on good analysis and study of desirable future land use. When something looks so fishy that no reasonable planning commission would perceive it as a logical and desirable land use pattern, then the court may well say that's spot zoning.
A Rhetorical Flourish Against a Rezoning
So at the local level, when you hear this argument, it may be simply a rhetorical flourish, or it may be a pretty fair assumption of how most objective parties would view the situation.
The most important element to keep your local government legally defensible is to keep in mind that decisions should be based on logical and sound analysis rather than personalities, preferences, or property owners.
If everyone could have whatever zoning he or she wished as a property owner, there would be no purpose in having the regulation. It would be like one place where I worked, where supposedly in earlier times the zoning map was kept in pencil and people crept in and erased the category abbreviation and changed it to what they wanted.
Those were the bad old days.
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