In many parts of Charlottesville, it is illegal to build duplexes and other types of houses meant for multiple families. The consequence, according to the city’s Planning Commission, is unaffordable housing and segregation.

Commissioners are hoping to contribute to city efforts to confront these problems through the land use chapter of Charlottesville’s Comprehensive Plan, which is currently being updated.

On Dec. 17, the City Council offered support for the Planning Commission’s vision and critique of the specifics of the plan’s future land use map.

“R1 [single-family] zoning doesn’t need to be what it is today in the future. I think we all can get behind that, and that is where we can get that density throughout the city in a much more meaningful way,” Councilor Heather Hill said.

Changing the Comprehensive Plan future land use map does not change the zoning laws that apply to any property in the city. However, commissioners hope to use the plan and extensive community feedback to change zoning law in the near future.

“Our zoning is a ‘wastebasket of errors,’” said Commissioner Lyle Solla-Yates, quoting Alexander Ikefuna, director of the city’s Department of Neighborhood Development Services. “We can fix it, but it will be hard and expensive and will take time, and this will be the guide to give people what they want.”

The future land use map envisions a gradual transition between low-intensity neighborhoods and high-intensity job centers.

The low-intensity neighborhoods still would be primarily residential, but “single family, multiplex, townhomes and other smaller scale residential structures are encouraged,” according to the map key.

Solla-Yates wrote the language for increasing density in previously single-family neighborhoods, drawing on several years of research into zoning in Charlottesville.

Solla-Yates said that, like cities across the South, Charlottesville implemented zoning as a new way of enforcing segregation. The Supreme Court upheld cities’ rights to restrict land uses on private property in the 1926 Village of Euclid, Ohio v. Ambler Realty Co. case.

“Which was interesting, because the lower court was like, ‘This is obviously segregation. Are you kidding me?’ The Supreme Court didn’t address the issue at all,” Solla-Yates said. “That’s when we got the 1929 zoning right here in Charlottesville.”

That zoning restricted development across much of the city to detached houses and duplexes. A letter to the editor at the time said the zoning “savors of a spirit of exclusiveness.”

“The idea of the map was rich whites in the north, African-Americans in the lower areas that were smelly and caused disease and by the railroads, and then anywhere else, poor whites could live,” Solla-Yates said. “We’ve just carried that map forward.”