Overlaid zones: the map layer that changes what you may do on your lot

It is Chapter 7.3 of Joint Regulation No. 9473, inside the volume on processes before the Planning Board. The Board may establish special overlaid zones or areas to address the particularities of districts needing special treatment. The purpose of overlaid districts, the regulation says, is to make viable the objectives and public policies on land use, with attention to those relating to protection, conservation and rehabilitation, in identified zones. A note on the source: the chapter’s title is printed as "Zonas y Áreas Especiales Soprepuestas", with the misprint; we name it correctly and flag it.

This chapter is not applied for: it applies according to where the property sits. The special overlaid zones are the Tourist Interest Zone, under Rule 7.3.2; the Historic Zone, under Chapter 10.2 of Volume X; the School Zone, under Chapter 7.4; the Special Planning Zone, under Section 7.3.3.2; the Port Zone, under Rule 7.3.4; and the Risk Zone, under Rule 7.3.5. The special overlaid areas are the Special Planning Areas, under Section 7.3.3.1 and the Coastal Zone Programme in force; the Nature Reserves, under Section 7.3.3.3; and the Agricultural Reserves, under Section 7.3.3.4. What decides which rules apply to you is which of them your lot falls in, and one lot may end up split: where the overlaid zones’ limits divide a lot into two or more parts with different conditions, each part is subject to the requirements corresponding to the zone it sits in.

• In a Tourist Interest Zone: obtaining the Tourism Company’s prior written recommendation before OGPe or the municipality grants any franchise, permit, authorisation or licence for works, constructions, installations, services, use or activities within the zone.Verified against the official source
• In a Tourist Interest Zone: that any variance, whether or not the district is qualified as tourist, have at least one mandatory public hearing.Verified against the official source
• In a Risk Zone, in high and very high landslide susceptibility areas: presenting a geotechnical study by a licensed geotechnical engineer, with a certification signed and sealed by them, evidencing that no landslide deposits or colluvial materials exist, or that the design takes all mitigation measures and will not cause instability to neighbouring land.Verified against the official source
• In a Risk Zone: seeking recommendations from the Planning Board and the National Flood Insurance Programme’s Participating Communities and complying with them; and in flood zones, complying with the Special Flood Risk Areas Regulation in force, Planning Regulation No. 13.Verified against the official source
• In a delimited urban centre: obtaining the Tourism Company’s recommendation for projects or activities forming part of a Tourist Interest Zone, and the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture’s for those in urban centres with a historic zone designation or on properties designated as historic sites.Verified against the official source
• To adopt a Tourist Interest Zone and for the Urban Centre Rehabilitation Plan: holding a public hearing under Rule 2.1.10 of Volume II.Verified against the official source
• To delimit a Port Zone: a regulation approved by the Ports Authority after a quasi-legislative public hearing, with notice published in two or more newspapers of general circulation at least fifteen days ahead, and the Planning Board’s approval of the map.Verified against the official source

• For the Urban Centre Rehabilitation Plan: an explanatory memorial; a study of the proposed urban centre’s existing and predominant uses; a graphic representation with all components, densities, land areas, infrastructure installation or improvements, accesses, parking and streets; compliance with Rule 7.5.4 on presenting qualification maps and geodata; delimitation of the polygon in NAD83; a social and economic analysis of the delimited area; recommendations from the government entities concerned, if any; and an evaluation certification sealed by a PPL under Rule 7.1.2.
• For the Rehabilitation Plan, additionally: a discussion and justification of compliance with the New Competencies Regulation for Enabling Urban Development and the Regulation on Planning Infrastructure in Public Space, the capacity of existing or proposed infrastructure, and a categorical exclusion certification from the DECA under the Environmental Public Policy Act, Act 416-2004.
• In a Risk Zone with landslide susceptibility: the geotechnical study and the certification signed and sealed by the geotechnical engineer who carried it out, presented to OGPe or the office empowered to issue permits.

1. 1

   Step 1: What an overlaid zone is

   The Planning Board may establish special overlaid zones or areas to address the particularities of districts needing special treatment. The purpose of overlaid districts is to make viable the objectives and public policies on land use, with attention to those relating to protection, conservation and rehabilitation, among others, in identified zones. The practical idea is that your lot has a qualification district — the one setting uses, height and occupancy — and on top of it there may be an extra layer adding requirements, mandatory recommendations from other agencies or limits of its own. The special overlaid zones are six: Tourist Interest Zone, Historic Zone, School Zone, Special Planning Zone, Port Zone and Risk Zone. The special overlaid areas are three: Special Planning Areas, Nature Reserves and Agricultural Reserves. Two of those layers have their own guide on this site: the School Zone, which comes from Chapter 7.4, and the designation of historic sites and zones, from Chapter 10.1.

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   Step 2: Tourist Interest Zone: no permit without the Tourism Company

   The Board, under Act No. 75 and Act No. 374 of 1949, has the power to delimit and designate Tourist Interest Zones. The purpose is to identify areas with tourism potential, stimulating their protection and development, and to avoid restricting uses and normative criteria — height, density, occupancy — where they conflict with the sector’s character. What matters most for a procedure is in Section 7.3.2.4: for cases in a ZIT, no franchise, permit, authorisation or licence for works, constructions, installations, services, use or activities within that zone may be granted by OGPe and the hierarchy I-III autonomous municipalities without the Tourism Company’s prior written recommendation. Every project, plan, elevation and all information with each application is approved after that recommendation. OGPe and the municipalities give consideration to the design and general arrangement, material, colour and architectural style of the building and to its adequate relation to the features of the buildings in the immediate neighbourhood, and on total or partial disapproval they state their reasons and make recommendations on design, arrangement, materials or colours. And no action modifying traffic or altering buildings, structures, properties, places, plazas, parks or areas of the zone may be implemented without the Board’s or OGPe’s prior approval, not even by government agencies or municipalities. Watch the variances too: any variance distorting the ZIT’s purposes is discouraged, and any variance within its physical-spatial context requires at least one mandatory public hearing.

3. 3

   Step 3: The Gastronomic Tourism Zone

   Within the same rule the regulation defines a more specific figure: the Gastronomic Tourism Zone is the geographic delimitation of a gastronomic zone of tourism, scenic, historic, cultural or natural value, where a concentration of food-selling establishments sits — food, drink and agricultural products, among others — recognised by the public or by tourists as a popular or important gastronomic destination. It must be a sector widely recognised locally and internationally, with a high concentration of restaurants or mesones gastronómicos; represent some culinary style, particular or general, of Puerto Rican cooking and carry out culinary activities promoting it; promote tourism and have tourist attractions. It may be a sector within a duly designated ZIT or a geographic area meeting the attributes, and it is delimited and designated by the Board together with the Tourism Company. And all the ZIT’s recommendation and permit-granting requirements apply to it.

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   Step 4: Special Planning Areas and Nature Reserves

   Special Planning Areas exist to establish a uniform policy and develop a programme for managing, beneficially using, protecting and developing the coastal zone’s land and water resources. Puerto Rico’s Coastal Zone Management Programme addresses five areas: protection of critical areas, coastal hazards, responses to development, active resource management and environmental education. APEs are areas with important natural resources, subject to present or future use conflicts, that need detailed planning, and they must have their corresponding management plans. Nature Reserves are areas identified by the DRNA and designated by the Board that, by their physical, ecological and geographic characteristics and by the social value of their natural resources, merit conservation, preservation or restoration to their natural condition. They are designated through four mechanisms: the Coastal Zone Management Programme identifies and recommends areas; once the Board accepts the designation it becomes an element of the Land Use Plan; the Natural Heritage Programme recommends any area in its Inventory of Areas of Natural Value; and the Legislature designates a nature reserve by special act. The criteria number seven, among them unique insular or regional character, great ecological value and a scarce, fragile or vulnerable character, and exceptional cultural, historic, geological or landscape value. Permitted uses include walking, swimming, diving, boating, outings, camping, scientific studies and plant and bird observation, established in the Management Plan prepared for each reserve.

5. 5

   Step 5: Agricultural Reserves and the Land Authority’s role

   The Agricultural Reserves section’s purpose is to set the guides and general rules identifying uses on land so designated in order to protect it so it can be used in agricultural activities, conserve it, provide for its adequate management, protect natural, historic and cultural resources, preserve watersheds and irrigation and drainage systems and guarantee its usefulness as a water supply, as well as to recover agricultural land. It applies to land within the delimitation of any agricultural reserve or agricultural corridor, whether on the Board’s initiative, at the Agriculture Department’s request or by mandate of a special act. The reserve must include land that currently has access to irrigation, land that may have it in future and is identified as of agricultural value, and abutting land serving as buffer zones. There is a title rule worth knowing: government agencies and public corporations holding highly productive farms with agricultural potential within the reserve — except the University of Puerto Rico’s Colegio de Ciencias Agrícolas — shall transfer the land they hold to the Land Authority where mandated by law. And the Agriculture Department, coordinating with the Board and the DRNA and advised by the Colegio de Ciencias Agrícolas, must devise and implement an agricultural development plan based on nine criteria, including giving the highest priority to farmers and agro-entrepreneurs within the reserve when granting incentives and advice, adopting the best management practices, complying with Act 238-1996, giving priority access to wage subsidy, investment credits, agricultural infrastructure and machinery, loan guarantees and the FIDA fund, designating Land Authority agronomists as administrators, integrating supermarkets and distributors to create marketing guarantees, coordinating tax benefits under Act 225-1995 with Treasury, giving priority to irrigation and drainage applications, and stimulating the zone’s tourism and agro-tourism.

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   Step 6: Port Zone: who delimits it and how it takes effect

   Act No. 151 of 1968 provides that the Ports Authority is the agency in charge of controlling and administering the ports. The Authority may establish the Port Zone to make the fair, efficient and economical administration of its uses viable and to charge adequate fees, so as to protect, promote and enhance navigation, commerce, prosperity and the general welfare; and it is responsible for a maintenance plan for the existing infrastructure financed with those charges. The delimitation is made coordinating with the Planning Board and the DRNA, with the authorisation of the Authority’s Board of Directors, and rests on an appraisal of existing and potential port resources and users’ needs. Importantly: the delimitation does not infringe the central government’s authority to determine compatible land use nor affect land-use classification. The criteria include topography and maritime access, present uses and expansion capacity, land title and potential expropriation costs, accessibility to road, energy, water and sewer infrastructure, vehicle and pedestrian flow, port flow and dredging needs, environmental considerations, and public access to public-domain assets, including the maritime-terrestrial zone. Every Port Zone is delimited by regulations the Authority approves after a quasi-legislative public hearing, with notice published in two or more newspapers of general circulation at least fifteen days ahead and held in the port’s city or town. Afterwards, the Board of Directors approves the map and submits it with the record to the Planning Board; if the Board approves it, it takes effect with the force of law thirty days after its promulgation and registration at the Department of State. And if the Board disapproves or amends it, the Authority may appeal to the Governor within thirty days or accept the amendments.

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   Step 7: Risk Zone: what triggers it

   The Risk Zone’s essential purpose is to recognise these soils’ special characteristics as to landslides, flooding, high-hazard coastal areas, storm surge, erosion and other unfavourable conditions, seeking to protect residents’ and owners’ life and property; and to protect the soils from the urbanising process and from human activities triggering their risk potential, reducing severe and repetitive losses and the need to invest public and federal funds. This overlaid zone establishes additional protection standards to be met in the underlying qualification districts. The existing districts’ provisions remain the same as to permitted uses, but future projects — expansion, new construction, reconstruction, substantial improvement and urbanisation, among others — must be governed by the ZR’s provisions. For landslides, the ZR considers areas of high and very high susceptibility under the Puerto Rico Landslide Susceptibility Map (Monroe, 1979) or its revised version, areas with a landslide history, and those identified as landslide deposits under the USGS geological quadrangles. For flooding, it considers zones identified as floodable under the flood insurance rate maps in force, with particular attention to high coastal risk (VE), high river risk (AE) and Floodway zones, covered by Planning Regulation No. 13; and also areas with a high coastal erosion rate or projections of high erosion per the Board’s maps.

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   Step 8: Risk Zone: what you may and may not do

   The compatible activities are five, provided they do not conflict with conserving and protecting the type or class of resource: green areas; open-air recreational area; planting trees for non-commercial purposes; contemplation of the landscape; and agricultural uses not entailing the construction of structures. For high and very high landslide susceptibility areas, permit applications may be considered where a geotechnical study by a licensed geotechnical engineer, using the best engineering practices, evidences through field studies that no landslide deposits or colluvial materials exist on the land; or where, if they do exist, it is shown that the project’s design takes all mitigation measures considering the risk and that the development will not cause instability to neighbouring land. In both cases a certification signed and sealed by the geotechnical engineer is presented to OGPe. Now the limitations, the chapter’s harshest. Use variances, urbanisation via exception and exceptions are limited. On segregations: no segregation of land or portions is permitted except to make viable a public safety work tolerated in the district, nor segregation of portions of farms or lots in the rest of a farm holding another classification, except to devote the ZR portion to public use in favour of a competent body by public deed. On constructions: for existing structures, up to ten per cent expansion of gross construction area or a maximum of five hundred square feet, whichever is less, and no greater expansions are permitted; and no rehabilitation of disused or abandoned structures for any proposed use is permitted. On permisos únicos: no new permisos únicos will be granted, except those for which a single construction permit was obtained before the ZR was adopted; nor is the granting of exceptions, urbanisations via exception or variances of use, area, intensity or any construction permitted; and constructions carried out are subject to inspection by central government officials.

9. 9

   Step 9: Urban Centre and its Rehabilitation Plan

   Delimiting urban centres aims to repopulate, strengthen and revitalise them through housing development and occupation, rehabilitating commercial areas, planting trees on sidewalks and plazas, creating parking areas, developing community areas, parks and recreational spaces, building and repairing structures and building on vacant lots. For issuing any final determination on consultations, permits, authorisations, licences or certifications, a recommendation is required from the Tourism Company if the project is part of a duly delimited Tourist Interest Zone, and from the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture if the urban centre has a historic zone designation or there are properties designated as historic sites. Municipalities wanting revitalisation projects ask the Board to delimit the area, and the Board does so coordinating with the Mayor, considering the urban structure, the set of uses, morphology, historic evolution, continuity of the urban layout, population density, territorial area, qualification districts, existing infrastructure, level of economic activity, number of dwellings, per capita income, unemployment rate and socio-economic analysis. Once the centre is delimited, the Rehabilitation Plan is drawn up coordinating with the Board, with an estimated six-month period. The plan is submitted through the Board’s Digital File System or in person, with an explanatory memorial, a study of uses, a graphic representation, compliance with Rule 7.5.4, delimitation of the polygon in NAD83, a social and economic analysis, recommendations from the entities concerned and an evaluation certification sealed by a PPL; and the Environmental Public Policy Act must be met through a categorical exclusion certification from the DECA. The Board holds a public hearing, the plan is adopted by Resolution and approved by the Governor through an Executive Order, takes effect thirty days after being filed at the Department of State, and must be reviewed by the municipalities every five years.

The Planning Board establishes and delimits the special overlaid zones and areas. In a Tourist Interest Zone, the prior written recommendation comes from the Tourism Company, and OGPe or the hierarchy I-III autonomous municipality grants or denies the permit. Nature Reserves are identified by the DRNA and designated by the Board, or designated by the Legislature through a special act. Agricultural Reserves are delimited on the Board’s initiative, at the Agriculture Department’s request or by mandate of a special act, and the agricultural development plan is devised by the Agriculture Department with the Board and the DRNA. The Port Zone is delimited by the Ports Authority through regulation, after a public hearing, with its Board of Directors’ and the Planning Board’s approval, and with an appeal to the Governor. In the Risk Zone, the geotechnical engineer’s certification is presented to OGPe or the office empowered to issue permits. And the Urban Centre Rehabilitation Plan is submitted to the Board through the Digital File System or in person at the Secretaría.

• Looking only at the qualification district and not at the overlaid layers applying to the lot.
• Filing a permit inside a Tourist Interest Zone without the Tourism Company’s prior written recommendation.
• Counting on a variance in a ZIT without allowing for the mandatory public hearing the chapter requires.
• Planning a segregation in a Risk Zone, where it is allowed only for a public safety work or for public use by deed.
• Projecting an expansion greater than ten per cent or five hundred square feet on an existing structure in the ZR.
• Buying an abandoned structure in a Risk Zone to rehabilitate it: it is not permitted for any proposed use.
• Seeking a new permiso único in a Risk Zone without a single construction permit predating the zone’s adoption.
• Forgetting the ICP’s recommendation in an urban centre with a historic zone designation or historic sites.

These are the government pages this guide is based on.

• Junta de Planificación de Puerto Rico (JP)

  Junta de Planificación

  docs.pr.gov

• Planning Board

  jp

  jp.pr.gov