With Zoning Change, Des Moines Hopes to Lure Suburbanites

Last December, Minneapolis passed an ambitious plan to increase the housing density allowed across the city. Since then, similar “upzoning” proposals appear to be popping up everywhere. Austin and Seattle both passed laws that let the air out of their restrictive zoning codes. California narrowly missed with a bill to enable more housing construction near transit and in neighborhoods with single-family homes, but Oregon got the job done earlier this summer, passing the nation’s first statewide law doing away with single-family zoning.

With all these housing density trends pointing upward, downzoning—or changes to codes and laws that encourage sprawlier development—would appear to be on its way out. If that’s true, Des Moines never got the memo. Whereas Minneapolis 2040 encourages the construction of duplex and threeplex homes and apartments, the Des Moines 2040 calls for changes that local homebuilders say would make it harder to build.