Philadelphia Overlay Districts

Philadelphia Overlay Districts: A Row of Homes in Fishtown, Philadelphia

In this space, we’ve explained what zoning districts are, and summarized the three main categories of zoning district: commercial, residential (single-family and multi-family), and industrial.  We’ve even reviewed the basics of sign permitting.  So you might think that our Philadelphia zoning guide is complete!

… you would be wrong.

Having a zoning code with detailed regulations for each parcel of land in the city might seem like the definition of a zoning code.  But Philly’s zoning code doesn’t merely define types of parcel.  It also sorts those parcels into geographic units.  In certain areas of the city, it’s not enough to know that your property is considered RSA-5 (that is, residential single-family, attached).  Your property might also fall under regulations for the Center City district – CTR – or the Central Delaware district – CDO.  There are twenty of these in all, and they are called Overlay Districts.

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Zoning Guide: Philadelphia Sign Permits

The sign for Famous Fourth Deli in Philadelphia: an example of a building with a philadelphia sign permit

Zoning Guide to the Philadelphia Sign Permit

Welcome back to Permit Philly’s Philadelphia zoning guide!  In this series, we’ve covered commercial zoning in Philadelphia, single-family residential zoning, multi-family residential zoning, and that sweet sweet hipster zoning.  Now we’re going to talk about the Philadelphia sign permit.  Warning: this story features graphic descriptions of bureaucracy.

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Philadelphia Zoning Guide: Multifamily Zoning

Philadelphia Multifamily Zoning - RM-1 - Zoning Guide

Welcome to Permit Philly’s Philadelphia Multifamily Zoning Guide!

If you’d like to see the other parts of this series, click here.

Oh my god we’re back again.  We’ve covered Commercial MiXed-use (CMX) and Residential Single-family Attached (RSA) zoning in our Philadelphia zoning guide.  Now it’s time to tackle Philadelphia multifamily zoning.

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Rezoning Property in Philadelphia

Rezoning Property in Philadelphia: RSA to Multi-Family

We interrupt Permit Philly’s zoning guide for an important message.

In this blog we’ve been slowly progressing through the Philadelphia Zoning Code’s classification of properties (if you’d like to see the series, click here).  But today we’re not going to do that: today, we’re going to talk about rezoning property in Philadelphia.  Specifically, we’re going to answer the question seemingly everyone has about multifamily buildings in Philadelphia:

Can I re-zone my single-family building as a multi-family building?

Nope!  Next question.

Okay; it’s a little more complicated than that.  Let’s take this step by step:

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Philadelphia Zoning Guide: CMX Building Overview

Philadelphia Zoing Guide

Welcome to Permit Philly’s Philadelphia Zoning Guide!

I was recently at a neighborhood meeting where a member of the group casually observed that the Philadelphia Code allows for an 8.5-foot-wide garage, but should really allow only a 9.5-foot-wide garage.  If you are this person, you might not need this blog post.  But for most of us in Philly – and especially for developers and ambitious homeowners – It’s useful to go over the uses and general Philadelphia zoning rules about buildings to get a sense of what the City does and doesn’t want.  So here’s our Philadelphia zoning guide series.

First, we’ll handle the commercial buildings that also allow residential use:  Commercial MiXed-use, or CMX.

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