Welcome to the Online Guide to Iowa Zoning

Why create this Guide?

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Iowa, like the rest of the nation, is facing the challenge of meeting the housing needs of its residents. Zoning regulations play a role in the quality and quantity of housing, and the speed with which housing gets built. To help better understand the relationship of city zoning to the provision of housing in Iowa cities IFA issued a request for proposals to (1) develop an inventory and analysis of local zoning ordinances in Iowa, and (2) the compiling of data to evaluate how local zoning ordinances may be impacting housing development.

What cities are included?

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Per the RFP, the project focuses on:

1. The largest 250 cities in the state.
2. All cities in the largest 10 counties of the state not already captured in criteria (1).
3. To ensure all counties were potentially represented we included the largest city in each county not already captured by (1). This resulted in the inclusion of the cities of Sidney (Fremont County) and Keosaqua (Van Buren County).
4. We also included three Census Designated Places (CDPs) with populations greater than 2,000. Land use in these CDPs is governed by county zoning.

We were able to collect both usable zoning maps and texts from 243 cities. As expected the cities from which we were least successful in collecting data are the smallest cities and the rural cities experiencing little or no growth. Some of these cities might not have zoning ordinances since cities in Iowa are not required to adopt zoning. The largest city in our database is Des Moines (2020 population 214,133), while the smallest is Salix (2020 population 295).

What information is included in the Guide?

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The Guide includes zoning maps and district-level housing-related regulations as adopted by the cities as of December 31, 2024. Later map or text amendments are not included. The Guide was developed as a snapshot in time. Because the Guide focuses on housing-related regulations, code provisions regarding commercial and industrial development were not recorded.

The district regulations below are displayed in the Guide. Information on other regulations was collected but is currently not displayed. The data was standardized as much as possible to allow for comparisons among cities and city types, while still retaining their main regulatory function. For example, the setback standards displayed are for "typical" residential lots; the unique setbacks usually applied to corner lots, through lots and other exceptional cases were not recorded.

Zoning can be technical. How will I know what the zoning terms mean?

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Understanding the Guide does require some basic knowledge of how zoning works and the meaning of some zoning terminology; however, we have created a document that explains how some terms are specifically defined and used for purposes of the Guide.

Definitions and Explanation of Terms for the Online Guide to Iowa Zoning

Do you make comparisons of zoning regulations among cities?

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Yes. As you navigate the Guide you will see tables that compare any city you select to the other cities of its type on a few key attributes. We developed a typology to allow for reasonable comparisons between cities based on their sizes and growth rates. You can read a detailed explanation of the five city types in our typology here:

Explanation of our typology

Did you look at other factors besides zoning?

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Yes. We used a number of datasets from the U.S. Census Bureau relevant to housing and sorted the data by our city typology. After a literature review we created a set of general indices that provide some insights into whether our study communities are keeping up with housing demand relative to changes in population, employment and other factors. This work can be found by following the "Online Guide to Iowa Zoning Tableau Dashboard" link below.

What else do I need to know about the Guide?

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Planned development districts (Planned Unit Developments, Planned Residential Developments, etc.) in Iowa are overwhelmingly adopted according to the specific terms of a development agreement between the landowner/developer and the city. Once a development agreement is reached the land is then rezoned to the planned district, and the terms of the agreement become the controlling regulations enforced by the city. These agreements are highly individualized and, except in rare cases, the parameters are not incorporated into the ordinance as published and accessible.

We display as much information as we were able to gather without collecting and analyzing the many hundreds of development agreements in place across Iowa cities.

We collected data on the prevalence of Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) provisions in cities; however, during the 2025 legislative session that ended after we finished data collection and coding, the Iowa Legislature adopted HF 592. HF 592 requires cities to allow ADUs "on the same lot as a single-family residence," and imposes other limitations on cities' abilities to regulate their size, placement and design, and other characteristics. To avoid confusion about the legality of local ADU regulations we have chosen for now not to display them in the Guide.