Yes, Someone Made a Comic Book About Zoning

National League of Cities announced a comic about the process of city planning and zoning in places like Boise, Idaho: One of our biggest challenges was effective communication. Zoning codes are complex documents that rely on technical terms, making it difficult to summarize important information and avoid the “jargon trap.” We also struggled to help people visualize changes that sound abstract when described in words, like decreasing a minimum lot size. Conventional city planning wisdom is that people tend to oppose change simply because we fear the unknown, but our experience was different: while there was plenty of disagreement about specific changes to the code, there was broad agreement that we were ready for change. People were concerned about housing affordability for future generations and excited about the possibilities of growth, such as new transportation options and neighborhood-scale businesses within walking distance of home or work. Those shared values became an important part of the rewrite, and we did not want to lose sight of them. Technical documents are good at explaining what the rules are, but not why those rules exist. So we set out to create something that c...