Does every county in Tennessee have zoning?

No. County zoning is optional under Tennessee Code Annotated Title 13, Chapter 7, Part 2, and a number of Tennessee counties have never adopted a countywide zoning ordinance. In those counties, zoning generally exists only inside incorporated city limits, and unincorporated land outside those limits may be effectively unzoned.

What is Nashville's zoning code called?

Nashville and Davidson County operate under a single consolidated Metropolitan Zoning Code, since Metro Nashville-Davidson is one of Tennessee's few consolidated city-county governments. This means one code and one planning department govern the entire county rather than separate city and county rules.

How do I find the zoning classification of a parcel in Tennessee?

Zoning classification is set locally, so you need to check with the relevant city or county planning and codes department, most of which maintain GIS parcel viewers showing zoning district boundaries. The statewide TNMap GIS clearinghouse can help locate the correct local jurisdiction and available data layers for a given parcel.

Tennessee · state zoning reference · Parcel data · lookup only

Tennessee zoning: how it works and what you can build

Tennessee pairs a home-rule-friendly constitution for its cities with a unique consolidated city-county government in Nashville-Davidson, set against a backdrop of Sun Belt in-migration reshaping suburbs like Murfreesboro, Franklin, and Clarksville faster than most local zoning maps have caught up with.

How zoning works in Tennessee

Tennessee's municipal home-rule provision, added to the state constitution in 1953, allows cities to adopt their own charters and exercise broader local authority, while counties generally operate under state statute unless granted specific authority by private act. Zoning power itself is delegated through Tennessee Code Annotated Title 13, Chapter 7: Part 1 for municipal zoning and Part 2 for county zoning. County zoning is optional in Tennessee, not mandatory, so a meaningful share of the state's unincorporated land has never been brought under a countywide zoning ordinance and instead relies on whatever zoning exists inside nearby city limits.

A distinctive feature of Tennessee's land-use landscape is its handful of consolidated city-county governments, most notably Metro Nashville-Davidson, which zones the entire county under a single metropolitan code rather than separate city and county ordinances. This gives Nashville-area developers a single point of zoning authority across what would elsewhere be a patchwork of jurisdictions, but it also concentrates political attention on that one code during rezoning fights.

Middle Tennessee, and Nashville in particular, has been among the fastest-growing metro areas in the country, which has intensified local debate over missing-middle housing, short-term rental regulation, and design review in historic districts like those in Franklin and parts of Knoxville and Chattanooga. Tennessee has not enacted a statewide ADU mandate or missing-middle preemption law, so these fights are still being fought city by city rather than resolved at the state level.

Who holds the zoning power

Land-use authority in Tennessee is delegated by statute, not assumed — these are the acts a zoning ordinance in Tennessee has to trace back to.

Municipal Zoning Act Tennessee Code Annotated, Title 13, Chapter 7, Part 1: Grants municipalities zoning power exercised through a planning commission and board of zoning appeals.
County Zoning Act Tennessee Code Annotated, Title 13, Chapter 7, Part 2: Authorizes counties to adopt zoning for unincorporated territory; adoption is optional, and not every Tennessee county has countywide zoning.

Major cities and their codes

The enabling act sets the ceiling; the municipal code is what a project is actually reviewed against. The 7 largest Tennessee jurisdictions and the codes they administer:

Tennessee — municipal zoning codes
City	Zoning code
Nashville (Metro Nashville-Davidson)	Metropolitan Zoning Code (Metro Nashville-Davidson County) Consolidated city-county government zones the entire county under one code; the state's fastest-growing large metro, with active missing-middle and short-term-rental debates.
Memphis	Unified Development Code (Memphis and Shelby County) A joint city-county planning department administers a shared development code across Memphis and unincorporated Shelby County.
Knoxville	City of Knoxville Zoning Ordinance Served by a joint city-county planning staff, though the city and Knox County retain separate zoning ordinances and legislative bodies.
Chattanooga	City of Chattanooga Zoning Ordinance Riverfront and downtown revitalization has been pursued through form-based overlay districts layered on the base zoning code.
Clarksville	City of Clarksville Zoning Ordinance Growth driven by Fort Campbell's military population and Nashville-adjacent commuter spillover.
Murfreesboro	City of Murfreesboro Zoning Ordinance One of the fastest-growing cities in the Nashville metro, dominated by new single-family subdivision development in Rutherford County.
Franklin	City of Franklin Zoning Ordinance Affluent Williamson County suburb with strong historic preservation districts and design-review overlays.

Parcel & GIS data

Tennessee does not publish a single authoritative statewide parcel-level GIS layer; the state's TNMap GIS clearinghouse aggregates select state and local layers, but authoritative parcel and zoning data are maintained by individual county assessors and city or county planning departments.

Real parcel geometry is already loaded for Nashville — see the zoning-by-city section above for a live district-and-parcel lookup there. That is not the same as a cited feasibility report: Chicago is still the only jurisdiction with bulk standards, § citations and a generated massing scheme.

Zoning by city

The statute sets who may zone; the city's own code sets what you can build. One guide per Tennessee city below, explaining the district codes that appear on its zoning map — 76 district codes across Tennessee so far.

Tennessee zoning — common questions

Is Tennessee a home rule state?: Tennessee municipalities may adopt home-rule charters under a 1953 amendment to the state constitution, giving them broader local governing authority. Counties generally operate under state statute unless granted specific powers by private act, and a small number of jurisdictions, like Nashville-Davidson, are organized as consolidated city-county metro governments with a single charter.
Does every county in Tennessee have zoning?: No. County zoning is optional under Tennessee Code Annotated Title 13, Chapter 7, Part 2, and a number of Tennessee counties have never adopted a countywide zoning ordinance. In those counties, zoning generally exists only inside incorporated city limits, and unincorporated land outside those limits may be effectively unzoned.
What is Nashville's zoning code called?: Nashville and Davidson County operate under a single consolidated Metropolitan Zoning Code, since Metro Nashville-Davidson is one of Tennessee's few consolidated city-county governments. This means one code and one planning department govern the entire county rather than separate city and county rules.
How do I find the zoning classification of a parcel in Tennessee?: Zoning classification is set locally, so you need to check with the relevant city or county planning and codes department, most of which maintain GIS parcel viewers showing zoning district boundaries. The statewide TNMap GIS clearinghouse can help locate the correct local jurisdiction and available data layers for a given parcel.

Working in Tennessee? Get on the list.

The parcel layer lands in the order demand does. Illinois went first because that's where the deals were; the next state is decided by who tells us what they're trying to underwrite. Tell us where you're building and what you wanted to run — you'll hear from us when Tennessee opens, and sooner if we need a test parcel.

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Want to see the finished shape of this work? Illinois is live at parcel level — Illinois zoning and the 53-district Chicago reference.

Tennessee zoning summaries on this page are provided for information, not legal advice. Confirm every project against the current adopted code for the jurisdiction and the statute as amended.