International Zoning Reference
Zoning and land-use systems outside the US — structurally different from the American district model.
Overview
The US profile schema assumes zoning = per-city with a bounded array of base districts. That breaks immediately at the border: Japan's zones are set nationally, Germany regulates at two scales, and the Netherlands folded zoning into environmental regulation entirely in 2024. Rather than force these into the US schema and lose what makes each distinctive, they live here.
Countries tracked
3
Granularity
Country scale
Tracked countries
Germany
Germany
Deutschland
Two-stage municipal planning (Bauleitplanung): a preparatory Flächennutzungsplan covering the entire municipality (guidance only, not legally binding on citizens) and a binding Bebauungsplan covering specific blocks or development areas (legally binding law, adopted as a municipal by-law). Form control — building lines, massing, open vs. closed urban form — is the primary regulatory axis; use is secondary. Older urban fabric often falls under §34 BauGB, a discretionary 'fits the character' standard rather than a B-Plan.
Baugesetzbuch (BauGB, Federal Building Code)
Japan
Japan
日本
13 land-use zones set by national law and applied identically across all municipalities within designated City Planning Areas. Zones are cumulative — each higher category adds permitted uses without removing the uses below. Regulation caps maximum nuisance rather than enumerating allowed uses, producing inherently mixed-use neighborhoods as the default case.
City Planning Law (都市計画法, 1968)
Netherlands
Netherlands
Nederland
As of January 1, 2024, the Environment and Planning Act (Omgevingswet) replaced 26 existing laws — including the Spatial Planning Act, Crisis and Recovery Act, and Soil Protection Act — with a single unified framework. Each municipality now has one Omgevingsplan (environment plan) covering its entire territory, which absorbed all prior bestemmingsplannen (zoning plans) plus general municipal by-laws. The plan assigns functions to locations (activity-based regulation) rather than destinations to parcels (use-based zoning). Use, form, noise, pollution, energy, and ecology are regulated in one document. Transition period runs through 2032.
Omgevingswet (Environment and Planning Act)
How to read these
For each country, the records/*.json file is a structured summary and the research/*.md file is the authoritative narrative. Start with the research MD — the JSON is derived.