13 Comments
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Dan Murphy PE's avatar

This is great summary Andy. Zoning created car centrism and all the associated negative effects.

State reforms so desperately needed.

I’d also recommend the book The Color of Law.

Andy Boenau's avatar

Thanks Dan.

ctyplnr's avatar

The 'Berlin Wall of Detroit', which is depicted in the article photo was moreso a product of a private developer not so much zoning but yet condoned at large.

Welcome to Interesting Times's avatar

Can you reference a book on this? You state the negative effects of zoning but you didn't have the space to actually make an argument.

Andy Boenau's avatar

I took the space to point out the purpose of zoning is what it does. One recent book is Arbitrary Lines by M. Nolan Gray.

The Voice: Fairfield CT's avatar

Fairfield (CT) needs a suburban planner soooo badly. We have his zoners who we call planners and pay for them like their planners but we don't have planning.

ctyplnr's avatar

I would be interested in helping. Send me an email at ctyplnr@bex.net. My name is Rob.

Jon Jon Wesolowski's avatar

What a great concise summary of the problem.

Andy Boenau's avatar

It's frustrating how many planners will correctly point out the POSIWID of traffic engineering (e.g. Level of Service analysis) but be unwilling to look at their own industry's systems of destruction.

Dan Murphy PE's avatar

We can do better but that’s mostly a dodge. Zoning killed people from inception by mandating car trips with out funding to pay for safety. Hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Jason Clifford's avatar

What weve lost is our collective creativity. Imagine a world where you could invest a portion of your 401k to an incremental developer in your neighborhood. You would want a return on your money but you'd also sit in on the board meetings and have some input into what your community looked like.

Joe 𐊐𐊁𐊕𐊆𐊓𐊁's avatar

This is fantastic. Thank you for writing what I’ve been meaning to write but never have gotten around to writing. This is a massive part of why I left the U.S. for more Dionysian pastures.