What could be worse than our current capricious zoning laws? New even-more-capricious zoning laws — imposed by zealots

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Tipped again by Poor and Stupid, novelist Orson Scott Card discovers everything that’s wrong with one-size-fits-all municipal zoning laws:

I’m not urging that the government mandate any more absurd mileage requirements for cars, or ration gasoline, or any other absurd proposals. Hybrids are great, for the things they’re great for. But even hybrids still burn gas, and if we could drive less, then hybrids would save even more gasoline.

In fact, all that I want government to do, locally and at higher levels, is to stop with the regulations that force us to use cars for everything, and replace them with regulations that permit us to walk or bike.

Right now, in most locations zoning laws force developers to create neighborhoods with houses of about the same size and cost, on roughly the same size lot, while forbidding any retail within walking distance.

Meanwhile, those same laws generally forbid the construction of new neighborhoods that mix income levels, house sizes, and densities.

(In Greensboro, we do have mixed-use zones that permit some aspects of a walking neighborhood, but it is only used in specific new developments, not for regions of the city large enough to make a difference. Most of the city is still zoned in the old way.)

It’s as if government looked at the beloved old neighborhoods that people drive through with yearning and nostalgia, and banned them.

The result is that the poor are shunted off into isolated islands, where crime thrives, employment is remote, and the poor have to own cars just to get a job. Meanwhile, most people can’t walk or bike to any useful destination, because the law has forbidden retail or office buildings anywhere near where people live.

I have no problem with allowing people to continue to live in pedestrian-hostile neighborhoods, if they want to. I just want the law to allow the construction and adaptation of low-car-use neighborhoods.

That means allowing low-parking retail to be built close to new and existing residential neighborhoods, like the old-fashioned “Main Street” town, where a commercial strip leads immediately to residential side streets.

In a town the size of Greensboro, this doesn’t mean one downtown that gets all the money and attention. It means dozens of little “downtowns” so that all the residential neighborhoods can be within easy walking distance of vital retail.

But, of course, Card can’t resist inventing his own one-size-fits-all totalitarian schemes, which he proposes to ram down everyone else’s throats. The alternative to zoning is not alternative-zoning but no zoning. The cities we admire and profess to want to reinvent were not invented in the first place. They are the gorgeous organic accidents that erupt when people do not presume to push each other around at gunpoint. Those cities grew the way they did because the real estate economy was still free. It had not yet been monopolized by well-meaning Babbitts wielding legislation and threatening prison time for non-compliance.

Card is absolutely correct that zoning yields results that are capricious and idiotic. His error is to presume that his grand designs — or Richard Florida’s or whomever — would be something other than capricious and idiotic.

But in fact, in politics and economics, the opposite of capitalism is caprice. A government’s decisions are not awful because they are always corrupt — although they often are. They are awful because there is no reward for being right, no penalty for being wrong, and no one anywhere to take responsibility for anything either way.

Capitalism is not instantly rational — it is not always automatically right about what to do, where and in what quantity. But capitalism is ultimately rational. In due course, entrepreneurs will achieve something approaching optimal results. Why? Because they are rewarded for being right, penalized for being wrong, and they are proud to take responsibility for their endeavors.

I don’t have any overarching objectives for my neighbors — use less gas, pollute less, exercise more, etc. Frankly, I think having objectives for my neighbors is creepy if not outright Stalinesque. But I know with certainty that getting government out of real estate would be of benefit to everyone in the long run.

But: Could anything be worse than our current zoning laws? Oh, you bet! New zoning laws imposed by zealots would be much worse. Given a choice — and the nature of government means never being given a choice — I’m happier with the status quo.

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