Why zoning

While we're still stuck with zoning (and it's associated problems), its good to understanding where zoning comes from: the peculiar conditions of post-war America. The way is done, it's 1945, it's a war economy, with a combination of price controls, wage caps, rationing and subsidies in place. The wage labor market is tight (despite having drawn huge numbers of previously non-wage female workers into formal employment).

But at the same time, there is a huge amount of the labor pool is still across the ocean as an occupying force that is about to come home, and a complete horror of unemployment that is going to result when all those guys come home.

There has only been a tiny amount of new construction in almost a generation--1930-1945. The whole built environment is run-down and functionally obsolete. While not everywhere is a slum, everywhere is run-down. And there are plenty of actual 'Hoover-ville' shanty towns.

So there is a clear need to build a massive amount of housing. The Federal government has been playing  footsie with social housing (Greenbelt, etc), following the lead of what major cities were doing pre-war, and what it had to do for the dependents of the enlisted population during the war.

It's the form of American post-war housing that's notable--America went hard for detached single family housing. And as near as I can tell, it's purely due to the "No man who owns his own home can be a communist". That aside, why the strict segregation of uses? Lots of places have zoning without it (Japan most notably). 

The legality of zoning was in question for a long time. Euclid vs. Ambler is the court case that establishes the legality of zoning, says it's ok to segregate uses.

Anyway, intent of zoning is 'hygienest'. An urge to separate like from unlike. Because all the existing development seemed unclean--too much overcrowding. 

But the functionally obsolete matters. There had been a lot of technological change from 1928-45, no small amount of it driven by the needs of the war itself. Stoves and furnaces are the things that come to my mind, but bathrooms (indoor plumbing with a porcelain throne) also a shift for a lot of America. (Surreal, but many tenement buildings had only a single bathroom per floor).  'Cold water flats', with no water heaters in the building (let alone the units) also a thing. 

Urban Ideology in America

Post-zoning, urbanism goes to hell, and there is rhetoric about the 'extinction of walking', and the assumption that everyone will drive everywhere, and walk no further than across a parking lot, and that there will be parking skyscrapers as-needed. And that ideology prevails until the 1970's, when the 'Urban Transportation Problem' gets published/realized--it's impossible to 'build your way out of congestion'. Also a general realization that the 'share automobile' of buses for non-car owners isn't financially viable (on a per-mile basis) in suburbia. So you get a decade of 'cars plus commuter transit' (BART, WMATA, MARTA) when it's realized that those cost too much to build out the planned network, and it takes until New Urbanism until we have an alternate ideology. While we're waiting for CNU to rediscover walkable urbanism, we're stuck with crank Modernist city planning, the rational comprehensive model, Brutalism, traffic-based transportation investments, and similar bunk.

How I'd do zoning: Nuisance

As time goes by, I like the idea of zoning less and less. It's a useful tool for planners, but it's really only useful for generating suburban sprawl. Rather, it's useful for real-estate speculation, as it ensure that the context around the new development is less likely to suddenly change: No pork rendering facility will suddenly occur next to the planned ranchettes. (This is largely a problem of suburbia, because only in the context of highway-enabled sprawl do land values change suddenly and systematically). 

So: How I propose to do zoning: Nuisance-based. Say, for example, there are three dimensions of nuisance: noise, shade and traffic. A 'noise' zone gets labeled by the maximum (peak) noise that can be generated at property edge: Airports would be in a 150 decibel zone, industrial in a 120 decibel zone, and cottage residential a 60 decibel zone. Some of the zones would be established by roadway proximity: An arterial highway generates 80 decibels.  Seems too difficult to map? Someone already did.

Shadow-zoning is also simply to explain: Nothing built on a lot can cast shadow on an adjacent lot. (Shadow on public ROW is ok). For urban locations, the rule could be 'no shadow on the lot behind you'. 

'Traffic' means traffic generation: How much traffic your expect to generate. That's easy to measure: Count the parking stalls. Uses with similar numbers of parking stalls are compatible. If the house next door can park two cars on the lot, a commercial building with two parking stalls is also acceptable. A 7-11 with four stalls in the parking lot would be a legal use, while a CVS with 20 would not be. Size of lot would be irrelevant--this is not a 'per 1000 SF' measure.  (Elsewise, Target would just buy up a big lot and generate huge amounts of traffic). 

Form-based zoning beats the pants off Euclidian (use-based) zoning, but it's mostly useful for infilling single-family neighborhoods. Mixed-use areas are going to need something better. 

 

Affordable Housing Modifications bill

via: Planetizen

Utah State Senator Jake Anderegg, R-Lehi proposed SB 34, an "Affordable Housing Modifications" bill for consideration by the State Legislature this year.

In addition to increasing funding for the state's largest affordable housing loan fund, SB 34 would allow mother-in-law apartments and encourage construction of high-density housing near transit in the hopes of promoting housing affordability (for more details on the proposed legislation, see news coverage by Tony Semerad from December 2018).

As noted by an article by Nolan Gray and Brandon Fuller, SB 34 would force local governments to plan for the state's worsening housing crisis. But unlike proposed laws in California and Oregon, SB 34 leaves much of the legal control of land use regulations in the hands of local governments. It will still be up to cities how they go about achieving their plans for growth.

"Municipalities facing a housing crunch would have to adopt at least three policies from a menu of popular housing reforms—policies that run the gamut from bread-and-butter housing policy to radical reforms. More conservative options, like starting a community land trust or purchasing and preserving existing affordable units, are still on the table. So, too, are permitting accessory dwelling units and lowering parking requirements," according to Gray and Fuller.

Sometimes, municipal boundaries are a joke

This is Lehi, Utah. It is a municipality, in Utah County. See all those little black holes in it? Those are county islands: Individual parcels of county land that aren't part of the city.

What a joke. None of them are rural, none of them will ever incorporate as their own cities: They are holdout landowners who didn't want to incorporate.

And then there are the 'cherry stems', with land on the edge of the city that is connected by a tiny corridor ('the cherry stem') to the city proper.

It's an administrative mess. To plan for a few islands in the middle, Lehi has to consult with someone elected to help govern county that is still substantially rural. For an island that shouldn't even fall under county jurisdiction.

There ought to be a law: If your parcel is completely enclosed (surrounded) by an incorporated municipality, it's annexation should be automatic.

Gentle Density, via Planetizen

From Planetizen:

Navigating the density debate might be easier if more cities embraced "gentle density," which Brent Toderian defines as "attached, ground-oriented housing that's more dense than a detached house, but with a similar scale and character. Think duplexes, semi-detached homes, rowhouses, or even stacked townhouses."

While even this mild form of densification draws opposition, it's less drastic than big blocky mid-rises. "Many people don't mind sharing a common wall and are eager to cut their costs and carbon footprint, but still appreciate a direct relationship with the ground. That's why fellow urbanist Daniel Parolek in San Francisco calls this kind of density the 'missing middle.'"

Rowhouses, townhouses and the like used to be an urban staple. But now, planners in many cities will have to relearn them. "In most cities though, deliberate zoning decisions have made this kind of housing illegal."

Full Story:

Canadian cities need more 'gentle density' to address housing crunch

Published on Tuesday, March 7, 2017 in Metro Toronto

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Note the parking: One garage slot, one driveway slot. But no on-street parking. Perhaps because the frontage is too narrow to permit a parking slot and a driveway?