Calling your bluff on reducing car dependency

Planners who claim to support walk-friendly, bike-friendly development have to confront zoning's role in car dependency.

"When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don't adjust the goals; abolish zoning."

—Confucius

I'm baffled by planners who promote walkable, bikeable, mixed-use developments, but aren't ready to abolish or reform some local regulations. Planners applaud each other at conferences and on webinars for pleading for walkability. Traffic engineers are the villain for their ever-expanding car-oriented analysis and design. How dare they! 

Look, that’s partly true. I started my career as a traffic engineer. The methodology for analyzing and forecasting is cartoonishly terrible. But—traffic engineers base their entire workflow on rules and regulations created by, updated by, and enforced by planners.

Zoning is part of the strong foundation urbanists call “car-oriented” development. That is, the exact opposite of walkable development.

Zoning exists to separate residential and commercial land uses. From Wikipedia (because American Planning Association puts everything behind a paywall):

Zoning is a method of urban planning in which a municipality or other tier of government divides land into areas called zones, each of which has a set of regulations for new development that differs from other zones. 

Zoning is the most common regulatory urban planning method used by local governments in developed countries.

Zoning laws that limit the construction of new housing (like single-family zoning) are associated with reduced affordability and are a major factor in residential segregation in the United States by income and race.

Today's most common land use rules deliver the situations pictured below. There are commercial zones within a few miles of residential zones in this city, but the zones are required to be spaced out and the street system is categorized to be car-first for commercial traffic.  

The public works department might slap a sidewalk and some ADA ramps on corridors like these. That's like mowing a yard of weeds and then later scratching your head when they pop back up. Zoning is the root of a car dependency weed. 

If a planner truly believes walkability is important, then they need to pull out land use rules that outlaw walkable mixed use. But walkable neighborhoods that you have to drive to are the closest we’ll get without confronting zoning. 

Secretaries Buttigieg (Transportation) and Granholm (Energy) give a joint opening statement in the USDOT’s Blueprint for Transportation Decarbonization:

Local zoning reform can... enable a wider range of transportation choices in local communities. 

Your move, local planning department. Show us reducing car dependency isn’t just a bluff.