Land Use Ordinances & Development Standards

This report is a guide for municipalities and counties in the Delaware Valley region to assist them in understanding and implementing zoning to promote smart growth. Smart growth is an approach to development that discourages sprawl, while encouraging revitalization of urban areas, infill, mixed-use, and land conservation, while promoting environments focused on pedestrian and transit accessibility. The report provides background on existing zoning methodology and smart growth innovations, including an extensive review of unified development codes, form-based codes, and the model SmartCode.

This guide describes the basic elements of land use planning and regulation available to municipal and county governments under the Pennsylvania Municipalities Planning Code. WeConservePA guide. 6 pages.

Act of 1968, P.L.805, no.247 as reenacted and amended. Twenty-third edition. January 2017.

Website maintained by a southcentral pennsylvania planning agency that introduces a variety of techniques and policies that promote smart growth principles.

When a local government is approving a subdivision and land development plan, a landowner or developer sometimes agrees to place restrictions on the land to ensure that no further subdivision or development of common open space or large lots can occur beyond that contemplated in the plan being approved. Pathways to establishing these restrictions in Pennsylvania so that they are enforceable in the event of a breach are described in this guide. WeConservePA guide. 6 pages.

Overlay zoning district to protect natural resources.

Meeting fundamental human needs while preserving the life support systems of planet Earth will require a world-wide acceleration of today's halting progress in a transition toward sustainability. Understanding Sustainable Cities: Concepts, Cases, and Solutions presents a plethora of subject matters in urban sustainability and provides both instructors and students with in-depth knowledge about crosscutting issues, concepts, and solutions inherent in modern sustainability thinking. This broad-based text illustrates how cities can and have applied concepts such as Ecological Footprint, modeling urban sustainability, sustainability indicators, urban adaptation, and climate action planning into their programs, policies, and urban planning and design.

Zoning (Planning Series Publication No. 4) is one of a series of 10 planning publications produced by the Governor’s Center for Local Government Services as a means to educate both professionals and non-professionals on the ways that planning and land use management are achieved within the commonwealth.