Blog

Los Angeles City Planning engages with community members on a variety of land use issues. In addition to hosting events and speaking at neighborhood council meetings, City Planning staff maintain a blog to share updates and insights on planning matters.

For additional information, contact: planning.media@lacity.org.

Follow City Planning on social media @Planning4LA.


What is the New Zoning Code?

City Planning is modernizing Los Angeles’s Zoning Code to align with contemporary planning needs. This is the first comprehensive update to the Code since 1946 and marks a major shift from strictly Euclidean zoning—the most common form of land use regulation in the United States—to a hybrid, or modular, zoning approach. 

Aerial view of Boyle Heights zoning

Supporting its portfolio of transparent, easy-to-access services, City Planning maintains the Zone Information and Map Access System, or ZIMAS, to allow individuals to learn more about the City’s neighborhoods and assist residents and businesses in making better informed land use decisions.

Zoning in Los Angeles

Zoning determines the size, shape, style, and location of buildings in a given area. If cities were living organisms, zoning would be their genetic code.  As genes determine people’s height and eye color, zoning dictates the land use rules at the local level.

FrameWORK: Urban Form and Neighborhood Design - Part One

Our FrameWORK series on the Los Angeles General Plan Framework Element  is intended to introduce you to the citywide document that la

Alphabet Soup
Alphabet Soup

CPC, GPA, CPIO, HPOZ . . .  what two things do these acronyms have in common? If you are a planning nerd like we are, they could randomly appear in a bowl of alphabet soup. Okay, so maybe that was a stretch. For the rest of you, they are examples of the Planning Department’s most frequently used acronyms in planning and zoning!

re:code LA as Explained by Popular Culture
Keep using the 1946 Zoning Code!? Ain't nobody got time for that!

 

As you may or may not know, the City of Los Angeles has started a 5-year project to modernize its Zoning Code. We know this news probably has most of you feeling like...