The short version
In most cities zoning is a technical sideline. In Scottsdale it is the main event. The city sells its looks, low buildings, clean roadsides, desert right up to the curb, and residents treat every proposal that might change them as a referendum on what Scottsdale is. So the process that decides what gets built is also the process that decides most local elections. Candidates run on height limits and apartment counts the way candidates elsewhere run on potholes.
That process has layers. At the top is the General Plan, the city’s long-range blueprint, which Arizona law requires and which voters must ratify. Below it are character area plans that apply the blueprint to places like Old Town. Below those is the zoning ordinance, the enforceable rulebook that says what each parcel can hold and how tall it can be. And running through all of it are appointed boards that hold hearings before the elected council decides.
Who does what
The Planning Commission, seven residents appointed by the council, holds the first public hearing on rezonings, General Plan amendments and use permits and makes a recommendation. It advises; it does not decide.
The Development Review Board judges design: architecture, site layout, landscaping and residential plats. Its seven members are one council member, one planning commissioner and five residents with design or development experience. This is the board that makes a drugstore look like Scottsdale.
The Board of Adjustment hears requests for variances, relief from a standard such as a setback when a lot has an unusual hardship, and appeals of staff decisions.
The council has the final say on every rezoning and General Plan amendment. A major plan amendment needs a two-thirds vote, five of seven, under state law. And because a rezoning is an ordinance, residents who lose can take it to the ballot by referendum.
General Plan 2035
Arizona’s Growing Smarter laws of 1998 and 2000 required cities to update their general plans and put each new one before voters. Scottsdale’s first plan dates to 1967; its first voter-ratified plan, General Plan 2001, passed on March 12, 2002. The council adopted General Plan 2035 on June 8, 2021, and voters ratified it that November 2 as Proposition 463, 53.6% to 46.4%. If voters had said no, the old plan would have stayed in force. The state also makes the council readopt or replace the plan at least every ten years.
The plan has 24 elements, the state-required ones plus locally created chapters such as Character and Design. It also maps areas for character area plans, of which seven are adopted: Cactus Corridor (1992), Shea Area (1993), Desert Foothills (1999), Dynamite Foothills (2000), Greater Airpark and Southern Scottsdale (both 2010) and Old Town (2018).
The desert rules
North of the older city, development follows the Environmentally Sensitive Lands ordinance, adopted in 1991 for roughly 134 square miles of desert and mountain terrain. It makes each project set aside a share of the site as permanent natural open space and protects washes, boulders and peaks. It built on the 1981 Native Plant ordinance, which protects large saguaros and native trees. Along designated scenic corridors such as Pima Road, Dynamite Boulevard and north Scottsdale Road, deep natural-desert setbacks keep the roadsides open. The North Scottsdale you drive through is largely these rules made visible.
Taste as policy
Scottsdale’s design culture came early. In 1962 the new charter council, a few months after voters approved the charter on October 31, 1961, banned billboards over the objections of outdoor advertisers. The 1960s chapter traces what followed: sign codes, design review and the citizen planning forums of the STEP program that fed the first General Plan. The instinct that the view is the product, and the city should protect it, runs straight through to the ESL ordinance and the Preserve.
The height fights
No zoning question has been hotter in the 2020s than height in Old Town. When the council unanimously adopted the 2018 Old Town Character Area Plan, it raised allowed heights in parts of downtown from 90 to 120 feet and widened the areas where buildings of up to 150 feet could be requested. Supporters saw it as the way to bring residents, offices and hotels downtown; opponents saw a skyline that would not look like Scottsdale.
The test case was Southbridge Two, a 10-acre redevelopment of much of the Fifth Avenue shopping district with buildings up to 150 feet along Scottsdale Road and the canal. The council approved it 4–3 on December 4, 2019. Opponents gathered about 17,000 referendum signatures, and on April 7, 2020, the council repealed the approval 4–3 at the developer’s request rather than send it to voters. The episode showed both sides how the system works: the council decides, but a referendum petition can freeze a decision, and the threat of one shapes what developers propose. The same arguments over height and density ran through the 2021 General Plan vote and the 2024 mayoral race.
The state’s limits
Scottsdale writes its own zoning, but inside state law. The biggest constraint is Proposition 207, the Private Property Rights Protection Act that Arizona voters passed in 2006 with about 65%. If a city adopts a land-use rule that lowers the value of property someone already owns, the owner can claim compensation, or the city can waive the rule for that parcel. The practical effect is that Arizona cities rarely downzone. Scottsdale can say no to a rezoning request, but it cannot easily take away what a parcel already allows. That is why the fights happen at the rezoning stage, and why the legislature’s growing appetite for overriding local rules on housing, short-term rentals and other land questions, covered in the preemption guide, matters so much here. To take part yourself, the taking part guide explains how to speak at a hearing or apply for a board seat.