Excessive Zoning Codes Have Robbed Cities of their Vitality
Zoning was introduced during the first decades of the last century.
New York City was the first to have a comprehensive zoning ordinance in 1916. This rose to the top of citizens’ concerns after the Equitable Insurance Company erected a new 42-story building in lower Manhattan that cast a perpetual seven-acre shadow over the Financial District. There were also growing concerns by the wealthy that their 5th Avenue mansions were being encroached upon by commercial and industrial buildings.
The entire code was 12 pages. A far cry from what we have today. Many large cities adopted the same code. In 1924, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover issued the first unified guidelines for zoning codes and urged adoption throughout the nation.
What started out as a way to preserve neighborhood characteristics became a straight jacket that more and more segregated housing, business, entertainment, and commercial endeavors from each other. The smaller the county or municipality that adopted conventional zoning ordinances, the farther from their origins their communities appeared.
Segregation patterns developed using zoning to restrict the type of housing that could and still can be built. Cars became the dominant form of transportation and entire downtowns hollowed out. In the late 1970s and 1980s, my current home of Stuart, Florida had almost no commercial activity downtown.
Today that small downtown has numerous restaurants and stores catering to visitors. Since there are few residents within the area, there are no supermarkets or even convenience stores for example. The people who live there must use cars to shop for even a quart of milk.
For most of America, conventional zoning codes have encouraged sprawl and citizens to be segregated by income. If only single-family homes are built, many of today’s Americans are left without viable housing options. The fewer dwelling units built make the ones available more and more expensive. Those same housing patterns that only encourage single-family homes also require that families have multiple vehicles.
Again, to use Stuart, Florida as an example, it is becoming increasingly expensive to live here. The NIMBY outcry of nothing being built that isn’t a single-family home has driven up the cost of housing as it has in many places in America. It has also resulted in minorities and poor people not living in the city. This has contributed to a shortage of workers.
The concept of living where you could walk to school, work, and stores is why cities developed. The single-family home on a large lot was, for most Americans, a form of housing that existed on farms and ranches. In town, folks lived above their businesses. Others did have their own homes within a few blocks of their offices. As towns grew more prosperous, there were larger homes built but the lots were still relatively compact.
Apartment living can be traced to ancient times. The last resurgence began in the late 19th and early 20th century when the rich and upper middle class abandoned their townhouses and sought out apartments. After the Second World War, veterans who had lived in cramped apartments began to move to suburbs where new single-family homes were being built on large lots where farms had been paved over.
In today’s America, we cannot afford to continue in that vein. The resources to maintain that lifestyle are prohibitive to many of us. The only alternative is to live closer to where we work and shop.
There is a tendency to think that the office is dead and, in fact, the office of pre-Covid probably is. However, a new hybrid system has and will continue to evolve where employees of a firm will get together to exchange ideas and meet at least a few days a week. We are a social animal and wither when kept isolated. Even in the heart of Manhattan where there is some fierce opposition to returning to offices, people are meeting for drinks, dinner, and entertainment after 5 very close to where they once worked.
Zoning as a concept can be useful. It shouldn’t be used to prevent us from living in places that offer everything within a 10-minute walk. When people in Stuart say they want to preserve our small-town character, they mean no new development. Our original small-town character was not because we were a suburb or a car society, but rather because we were a place that offered everything within a few blocks of our homes.
There are more people inhabiting Stuart today than 100 years ago. That only means to continue having that small-town feel, we need to construct residences close to our schools, work, and commercial establishments. The idea of small-town Stuart will only continue if we construct places where everyone can afford to live.
