Commentary: Rick Mohler: A Reckoning With Single-Family Zoning's Impact on Racial Equity—and on Architects’ Livelihood

Zoning laws in cities nationwide continue to preserve the legacy of redlining, excluding many people of color from homeownership—and many architects have a stake in the game.

By Rick Mohler

The Black Lives Matter movement has prompted a closer examination of the federal, state, and local policies that have systematically denied people of color the access to education, employment, public space, personal safety, and intergenerational wealth that so many others take for granted. One of these policies is single-family zoning, which many cities used as an explicit tool to racially segregate the U.S. beginning in the 1920s and, in the process, deny countless people of color access to homeownership, the most powerful wealth-building tool available to families.