Zoning and Landscape Laws

Zoning and Landscape Laws will be available to planning practitioners, landscape architects, and public officials who are interested in learning about the fundamentals of landscape codes and green laws. This course is now available.

Landscape and tree regulations may very well be the fastest growing area of zoning law.

Spurred on by the environmental movement of the 70’s, new urbanism and conservation planning in the 80’s and smart growth in the 90’s, landscape regulations and the way they are administered are becoming society’s way of ensuring that urban, suburban and mixed use communities maintain nature as an important element of community design. Collectively called “green laws,” the various landscape and tree regulations found in zoning ordinances, unified development codes or community comprehensive plans are preserving urban forest canopy, harmonizing objectionable land uses, screening conflicting views, controlling site clearing, regulating post construction planting and providing strategies for on-site storm water capture, water conservation and green parking lot design. Green laws are the part of zoning that preserves, protects and rebuilds nature in our cities and towns.

In this course, you will learn about the green law aspects of zoning, learn what a landscape code is, the basic vocabulary of landscape codes, how landscape, tree and clearing laws are structured, and how they are administered. Follow up courses are planned which will teach about the geography of development sites, technical code language and how to draft landscape regulations into zoning law.

The course instructor is D.G. Buck Abbey, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at Louisiana State University.

The course fee is $75.

This course qualifies for eight hours of Kentucky Planning Continuing Education Credit, as well as eight hours of AICP Continuing Education Credit. This courses may qualify for Tennesee Continuing Education Credit, contact your employer to find out.

For more information, contact Jennifer Evans-Cowley or call (614) 247-7479. To register for this course click here and complete the registration form.