Zoning can be used “a force for good,” according to Sara Bronin, author of “Keys to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World” and the featured speaker at the last Monadnock Summer Lyceum of 2025.
Bronin, an architect, attorney and professor at the George Washington School of Law, served as the Chair of Zoning and Planning for Hartford, Conn., for seven years. Bronin’s experiences in researching and reforming the zoning laws in Hartford to create more equitable and sustainable housing led her to found the National Zoning Atlas, an app designed to make zoning more accessible and improve land use.
Moderator Ivy Vann, an urban planner and former state representative from Peterborough, said that Bronin is also one of the founders of Desegregate Connecticut, a “pro-homes coalition of neighbors and nonprofits working to lessen Connecticut’s housing shortage.”
“Sara read 32,000 pages of Connecticut zoning code to be able to create an interactive map so you can look and see where you can build a duplex, and the National Zoning Atlas came out of that,” Vann said.
In researching urban sprawl in downtown Hartford, Bronin found that the treeless stretches of fast food restaurants and carwashes on the main avenue in the city had come about as a result of 1950’s zoning put in place to facilitate commuters driving into Hartford from the suburbs.
“All this zoning was put in place 70 years ago to accommodate cars, to create parking lots, and the street was widened to accommodate commuters. What was created is these low-income neighborhoods that are primarily African American and South Asian people, with a main road that is unsafe for pedestrians, with huge curb cuts, with no trees, with no sit-down restaurants for the people who live in the neighborhood, and the zoning actually created that,” Bronin said.
In the question and answer session following her talk, Bronin answered questions about Peterborough’s zoning and housing issues, and acknowledged that there is often a lot of fear around the prospect of changing zoning codes, especially in smaller communities.
“People are reluctant to change zoning codes because there is this feeling of—what could happen? But often, there is zoning that has been in place for decades, and the fundamental principles of that zoning is at odds with what people actually want to see,” Bronin said.
Bronin said zoning in Peterborough, and in most of New Hampshire, forces people to build homes in the least sustainable way, with a negative impact on the environment.
“My impression is that people in New Hampshire really care about the natural environment, but the zoning that is in place actually forces people to drive more. It forces people to push into more farmland, to push more woodland instead of conserving that green space. Requiring the large lots is a fundamental principal embedded into these local rules which really need to be rethought.”
Bronin noted that a typical single-family home in New Hampshire requires “a lot the size of a football field.”
“Across this state, 96 percent of land allows for single-family housing as-of-right, while only 3 percent of the land allows for multifamily housing. Statewide, 62 percent of single family land requires 80,000 square feet or more. In New Hampshire, you are requiring people to live that way, and there are not a lot of other options,” she said.
Bronin said some new types of housing like cluster development, which preserves green space, and co-housing are more environmentally sound solutions for housing.
In answer to a question from the audience on how to best facilitate affordable housing in Peterborough, Bronin’s answer was immediate:
“Lifting parking mandates, and turn the public hearing process around—make it earlier, so that the developers haven’t already made their plans, haven’t already calculated their return on investment and then have to make plans because of the public hearing. And lift height mandates,” she said. “The whole point is to re-set the playing field and not make developers the ‘bad guys’. They are not the bad guys. They are the ones putting their money on the line to build housing for people.”
Bronin contrasted the zoning situation in New England with her hometown of Houston, Texas, which is “the only large city in the U.S. without zoning.”
“Houston has no land use controls. There is some code for subdivisions or parking, but it is very disjointed. Where I grew up, there was a gas station across from my building, there were strip malls, parking lots, no trees. This sense of disorder popped up. It is all throughout the city,” Bronin said.
During a recent visit to her hometown, after three years away, Bronin said she was struck by the chaotic character of the city.
“Right now, within the city limits, there are factories and refineries and industrial sites inside the city, and of course they are all next to to low-income neighborhoods which are all people of color,” Bronin said. “I wrote an op-ed for the Houston Chronicle and I kind of threw down the gauntlet. We could have a totally new approach in Houston—we could make the city more beautiful, more orderly, safer, and more equitable. Zoning could do that.”
Sunday’s Lyceum was sponsored by realtor Cathy Cambal-Hayward. Music was provided by the Maple Trio, and flowers were provided by Rosaly’s Farmstand.
For information about Sara Bronin go to www.sarabronin.com.