A few days ago the New York Times Upshot ran a piece on single-family zoning and the emergence of political energy that is seeking to curtail the prevalence of single-family zoning. We see this happening in Oregon, California, and Minneapolis in particular as cities try to confront affordability, climate change, and inequality.
I wanted to take a look at Omaha, and tried to generate a similar map. Pink represents single-family zoning, blue is multifamily zoning.
The housing units here fall into what Omaha zones as Rn residential that varies from high density to low density, as well as what Omaha calls “urban family residential” which includes single-family housing, duplexes, and townhouses. While Omaha allows for additional housing in areas not necessarily zoned for residences (such as apartments built over offices), the map looks only at land set aside exclusively for housing.
The higher resolution version is here. Thanks to the City of Omaha for providing open datasets for building footprints, zoning, and city limits.
