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The reference · 50 states · 327 cities · free, cited, no account

The zoning reference: every US state, cited to the statute

Zoning is written locally and authorized by the state, so there is no single code to look up. We publish it at three depths: the reference for all 50 states — who holds the power, under which enabling act, and the reforms that override local rules — then 327 city guides that translate the district codes on an individual city's zoning map, and finally Chicago, where the ordinance is read all the way down to the numbers: all 53 districts with FAR, height, density, setbacks and parking, each figure carrying its § citation. Everything here is free and needs no account.

Start with the deepest layer

District level · Chicago, Illinois

All 53 Chicago zoning districts, cited to Title 17

The only place the reference goes district by district today. Every class in the ordinance — RS detached houses, RT two-flats and townhouses, RM apartments, B business streets, C commercial corridors, D downtown, M manufacturing — with its floor-area ratio, height limit, lot area per unit, setbacks and parking minimum, each figure flagged verified against the ordinance table or marked as an approximation where the Code uses a contextual formula. Behind it sits the parcel layer: 2.62M parcels ingested across 255 jurisdictions in all 6 Chicago-metro counties.

City by city: what the district codes mean

Between the state statute and a parcel sits the thing that actually decides a project — the city's own ordinance and the two- or three-letter code stamped on your lot. We publish 327 city guides, each naming the ordinance by name, explaining how its district structure is organised, and pointing at the official map: 3,904 district codes read out across 306 cities so far, grouped residential / mixed-use / commercial / downtown / industrial / special purpose. The remaining 21 carry the ordinance overview and the lookup route while their tables are checked against the adopted code — and a handful, Houston being the obvious one, have no district structure to tabulate at all.

Every city guide is reachable from its state page — see the “Zoning by city” section on any of the 50 state references below.

Every state

One reference page per state, in plain English and cited to the statute. Illinois is the state where the reference stops being a reference — it is live at parcel level.

What the reference covers in each state

  • Who holds the zoning power. The enabling statute a local ordinance has to trace back to, and whether it lands with municipalities, counties, or both — home rule in one state, Dillon's Rule next door, counties with no authority to zone at all in a third.
  • The major-city codes. The zoning code each large jurisdiction actually reviews a project against, by name, because the enabling act sets the ceiling and the municipal code sets the answer.
  • The city guides under it. Every state page opens onto its cities — a page each for the 327 we have written up, translating the district codes on that city's zoning map into what they are actually for.
  • Recent reforms. The state-level changes that preempt or override local rules — ADU legalization, parking-minimum repeals, transit-oriented density, missing-middle upzonings — dated, so you can tell what a stale local code no longer controls.
  • Parcel and GIS data. What lot geometry and attribute data exists in that state, and who publishes it.
  • Common questions. The questions that actually get asked about that state's zoning, answered directly rather than deferred to a consultation.

The honest line: the three depths are not the same depth. Full district-by-district numbers — every class in a code with its FAR, height, density, setbacks and parking, each figure cited — exist for Chicago and nowhere else yet. The 327 city guides go one step short of that: they name the ordinance, explain the district structure and say what each code is for, but they do not publish that city's bulk standards, and 21 of them do not carry a district table at all. Everywhere else you get the state reference: accurate, cited, free, and stopping at the state line. The rollout order follows demand, so the waitlist on each state page is the fastest way to move your market up it.

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