The hydrometeorological implications of zoning laws: Can land use regulations of urban density and sprawl improve a city’s resilience?

Abstract:

The intensification of heat waves and of the hydrological cycle due to global climate change pose particularly high risks to urban residents. Cities are already hotter than their surroundings due to the urban heat island effect and are known to result in local intensification of rainfall and flooding due to their coupled impacts on the surface and the lower atmosphere. These interacting local and global changes can adversely affect the health and well being of urban residents, and city administrators are increasing efforts to mitigate and adapt to the potential disruptions though various infrastructure and preparedness programs. However, as cities worldwide continue to expand, a key decision is how to manage that urban sprawl and regulate its spatial features to aid in the mitigation and adaptation effort.

This study assesses whether alternative zoning regulations that modify the density and extent of a metropolitan region, but have a minimal impact on total population and demographic growth, have an appreciable impact on its response to extreme weather events, and as such, whether they can be used to increase urban resilience. We consider Baltimore (the city and its surrounding suburbs), which in 1967 adopted one of the first urban growth boundaries (UGBs) in the United States, as our test case. Departing from the urban extent circa 1900, we create alternative land use patterns that, compared to the actual current land use baseline, would have resulted from drastically different policy scenarios and approaches to zoning that the city would have undertaken. We consider various alternatives where the city is smaller and denser, due to stricter regulation, versus larger and less dense than the actual baseline, while maintaining the same total population. Our findings indicate that lower densities have significant benefits: compared to the current landscape and to denser patterns, they reduce both extreme temperatures during heat waves and spatio-temporal rainfall peaks. While the particular findings hold for Baltimore and many cities with comparable climates, the conclusion that zoning laws and the resulting spatial patterns for urban density have important implications on a city’s response to changing climate and extreme weather are more broadly applicable.