The County Zoning Ordinance is adopted to promote and protect the public health, safety, peace, morals, comfort, convenience and general welfare, and for the accomplishment thereof is adopted for the following more particularly specified purposes:

  • (a) To guide, control, and regulate the future growth and development of San Mateo County.
  • (b) To protect the character and the social and economic stability of agricultural, residential, commercial, industrial, and other private and public areas within the County, and to assure the orderly and beneficial development of such areas.
  • (c) To obviate the menace to the public safety resulting from the locating of buildings, and the use thereof, and the use of land, adjacent to streets and highways which are a part of the Streets and Highway Plan Unit of the Master Plan of the County, or which are important thoroughfares, in such manner as to cause interference with existing or prospective traffic movements on said streets and highways.
  • (d) To provide adequate light, air, privacy, and convenience of access to property;
  • and to secure safety from fire, inundation, and other dangers.
  • (e) To prevent overcrowding the land and prevent undue congestion of population.

See Zoning Regulations

Countywide Zoning Map 2006.jpg