Land Use and Zoning Law: Planning for Accessible Communities

The first land use and zoning law casebook to comprehensively integrate issues of accessibility under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Land Use and Zoning Law systematically addresses the complexites of aging in place and of disability in the context of local land regulation. This integrated approach is important because as many as thirty percent of American families have a family member with a mobility impairment, and also because mobility impairments increase with age. Making communities accessible requires attention to design, planning, and zoning. We not only need to remove physical barriers to access, we need to address the coordination of permissible uses, including the location of such uses as group homes, senior housing, drug rehabilitation centers, and medical marijuana dispensaries. These uses often raise conflicts with current property owners. Consequently, discussions of accessibility must go beyond design matters and focus on the coordination of uses within a community.