Zoning In and Out: Land Use Policies and Environmental Justice in Chicago and Houston

Abstract

Within literature on urban planning and environmental justice, both Chicago’s extensive citywide zoning policies and Houston’s utter lack of citywide zoning policies are charged with disproportionately increasing pollution burdens in low-income communities and communities of color. In this thesis, I posit a theoretical explanation to this apparent paradox: Chicago’s zoning ordinances concentrate high residential density zoning districts and industrial zoning districts in and near low-income communities and communities of color, while Houston’s lack of zoning restrictions allow well-resourced neighborhoods to protect themselves from unwanted land uses while other neighborhoods cannot stop the siting of polluting uses nearby. This thesis investigates the environmental justice implications of these two mechanisms, exploring why urban planning policies in Chicago and Houston evolved as they did. As far as I can tell, this study is the first to recognize the similarities between the assumed environmental justice impacts of zoning and the lack thereof and propose a solution. To support this theoretical model, I propose two hypotheses: H1 states that pollution burden is positively associated with race and income in both cities, though the effect size is likely not the same in each city. I test this hypothesis literature suggests the correlation is in the same direction in each city, though since I propose entirely different mechanisms, it seems unlikely that both would have near-identical values. H2 states that adding population density to the H1 correlation would increase its strength in Chicago but not in Houston. The proposed mechanism for Chicago’s pollution disparities involves artificial differences in neighborhood housing density, which logically impacts population density, and neither housing nor population density are a part of Houston’s model. We begin by reviewing the origins of zoning in the United States, which heavily featured racial objectives from the start, literature in environmental justice, and previous work at the intersection of urban planning and environmental justice. This intersectional literature provides justification for the model of zoning and environmental justice in Chicago proposed earlier. The next chapter features two case studies, tracing the histories of zoning in Chicago and Houston and then discussing modern-day issues. In Chicago, explicitly racist business interests played a large role in crafting the initial zoning ordinance while in Houston, similar interests opposed zoning. More recently, Houston’s communities of color have mobilized against zoning in multiple referenda, successfully defeating it at the polls. In Chicago, modern industrial rezoning efforts indicate an ongoing tendency to place more polluting facilities in low-income communities and communities of color, while in Houston, modern hazardous facility rules still allow such uses to be placed right across the street from homes, and natural disasters cause dangerous chemical spills and concentrated emissions in these “fenceline communities.” Quantitative analysis using a dataset from the Environmental Protection Agency supports H1, with the positive relationship between race and income and pollution burden being larger in Houston. Results also mostly support H2; while the added effect of population density is significant in Chicago as expected, the effect appears in Houston as well, though to a much smaller degree. The population density effect in Houston may result from lower homeownership rates and higher rates of renting apartments among people of color. Policy recommendations explore reforms for zoning and community engagement, building from existing proposals.