Zoning should promote public health

Legally, governments use their police powers to protect public health, safety, and welfare through zoning. This paper presents a case for revisiting zoning on the basis of increasing evidence that certain types of community design promote public health, as opposed to the dominant pattern of sprawl development, which does not. Zoning, and the land use planning linked to it, that prohibits or disfavors health-promoting community designs contradicts the inherent public policy goal on which it is based. If there is a paradigm shift underway, from traditional sprawl to health-promoting community, designs, then. health professionals and others should understand why zoning must be reassessed.