The district

How District 1 is zoned

Zoning decides what can be built where — homes, offices, shops, parks. It is the quiet rulebook behind why District 1 has world-class employers but nowhere to sit down for dinner. Explore the map below; toggle a category to isolate it.

47.1%

of developed land is zoned office & life sciences

0.4%

is zoned commercial & retail — the shops, restaurants, and services residents actually use

Nearly half of District 1’s buildable land works for the daytime economy. Almost none of it works for the people who live here. That reflects decades of decisions — and decisions can change.

Shares are of the district’s developed land. Parks, baylands, and open space — 90.9% of District 1 by area, most of it Bayfront preserve — are excluded so the developed categories are comparable. Zoning data: City of Menlo Park GIS.

Zoning is younger than you think

For most of history, cities mixed everything together — you lived above the shop, and the corner store sat between the houses. Zoning, the practice of legally separating where people live from where they work and shop, is barely a century old. New York City wrote the first comprehensive ordinance in 1916, and in 1926 the Supreme Court blessed the idea in Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty. Within a decade it had spread to cities across the country.

None of this is natural, and none of it is permanent. The map above is a record of choices — made by people, and revisable by people. A district zoned to separate homes from shops can decide to bring them back.

More coming

I’m building these maps out over time — transit and walking access, the projects in the development pipeline, and how new commercial space would change what residents can reach. If there’s data you’d like to see here, let me know.