Ten Ways to Loosen Our Zoning Corset: Paris Lessons for Canadian Cities

Why do Canadian cities feel so… well-behaved, compared to Paris?

The short answer: we’ve largely zoned out streetscape spontaneity.

Our bylaws overregulate the very form, function, and fine-grain complexity that make Parisian streets so magnetic.

To invite that more organic urbanity, Canadian zoning would need to shed—or at least rethink—a few old habits.

1. Single-Use Zoning

Remove: The strict separation of residential, commercial, and institutional uses.
Why: Paris didn’t get the memo that bakeries and bedrooms shouldn’t mingle. Shops, homes, offices, cafés, workshops, and schools coexist—often within the same block, or even the same building. In Canada, that kind of adjacency is often not permitted.
Replacement: Form-based zoning or mixed-use districts that focus on how buildings meet the street, not what’s happening inside them.

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2. Minimum Lot Sizes and Frontages

Remove: Rules demanding large parcels or minimum lot widths.
Why: Fine-grained parcels foster architectural variety and slow, adaptive change. Large-lot zoning smothers that energy.

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3. Setbacks and Separation Requirements

Relax: Mandatory front, rear, and side setbacks.
Why: The “front yard” and “front setback” obsession has left our streets looking like they’re afraid of intimacy. Paris leans in close—its continuous street walls define the rhythm of the city and blur the line between public and private space. Meanwhile, generous public rights-of-way can do the heavy lifting for ensuring accessibility, goods movement, and multimodal travel.

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4. Parking Minimums

Remove entirely.
Why: Nothing kills a romance with the street like a double garage. Paris’s walkability would be impossible under zoning that mandates one or two off-street spots per unit. Replace asphalt deserts—and even on-street parking—with well-designed public parkades or underground facilities, freeing streets for people and the ubiquitous cafe seating. Fewer empty parking stalls mean less wasted land—and less cost to society.

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5. Height and Floor Area Caps

Rethink or loosen rigid limits.
Why: Paris isn’t tall, but in most places it’s consistently mid-rise, framing human-scale streets. Canadian zoning tends to stop short at three storeys, then jump straight to towers, leaving a “missing middle” where urban life could thrive. The Parisian sweet spot—four to eight storeys—is now within better reach in Canada, especially with mass-timber construction.

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6. Overly Prescriptive Density Metrics

Simplify: Stop micromanaging numbers.
Why: You can’t measure charm with a calculator. Paris’s density feels humane because of its form—narrow streets, continuous façades—not its floor area ratios. Canadian bylaws too often chase equations instead of elegance.

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7. Prohibitions on Accessory Units, Corner Stores, and Live/Work Spaces

Remove: Restrictions on small-scale adaptive uses.
Why: Imagine if your morning croissant were technically illegal. In most Canadian residential zones, it is. The corner boulangerie, the artist’s workshop, the apartment above a shop—these micro-mixes are what keep Parisian neighbourhoods alive from dawn to midnight.

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8. Subdivision and Consolidation Controls

Encourage: Fine-grained, incremental infill.
Why: Parisian blocks evolved through centuries of fine-grained adaptation. Canadian practice favours large assemblies and comprehensive plans—efficient, perhaps, but rarely intimate.

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9. Aesthetic Micromanagement and Homogenization

Remove: Design rules that enforce sameness.
Why: True beauty thrives on a bit of chaos. Paris achieves coherence through consistent street form, not identical façades. Too often, Canadian design panels over-polish the personality right out of a place.

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10. Overreliance on Conditional Uses and Discretionary Approvals

Remove: The need for spot rezonings, development variance approvals, or municipal council blessings for small projects.
Why: In many Parisian districts, the framework of zoning and building law is clear, relatively consistent, and permits (for typical small-scale infill) are more standardised and less subject to political hearing-by-hearing negotiation than in many Canadian municipalities. That doesn’t mean no approval is required — it means the process is more routine and rights-based rather than case-by-case. 

Summing up:

By-right development within a broad but flexible framework encourages the kind of nimble, adaptive projects that help cities to grow organically. Canadian cities need zoning that shapes streets instead of strangling them. Let’s stop planning for control and start planning for better conversations about city building.