On Tue, 2 Jul 2002, ken avidor wrote: > Here's a few arguments some New Urbanists have against zoning: > > The most beautiful cities in the world were built without zoning and > planning. There is a lot of ugly cities and bland suburbs with > extensive zoning codes. Imagine Venice or Florence with our zoning > codes.
Also keep in mind that zoning does include to some extent right-of-way. Not the major thorofares, but the back-alleys and smaller residential streets. > Zoning makes neighborhoods homogenous, boring and > inconvenient.....restricting restaurants, bars and places to buy > essential things. Zoning does just that. But zoning is the tool. Planning departments that put together the zoning codes stating that no commercial operation can be within x-hundred feet of a place of residence have more to do with those SimCity-like suburbs. > Zoning gives a lot of power to officials who can give property owners a > variance from the code. That it does. > Without zoning, citizens would be more directly involved with the > design of their neighborhood and city. Exactly. You also get a lot more vandalism that way, as fed-up residence decide to burn out the liquer stores rather than live with them another week. Issues of fair use of right-of-way, something that is a city/county/state issue, would be ignored on the local level; think of the guy who runs a successful naughty-video store from his garage and what that'd do to alley traffic. What you don't get is planning. And that is, perhaps, the point. If you just let the neighborhood grow as an organic entity where each cell is out for itself, rather than let the City's planning department do it, you get a mixed-use neighborhood. > I think it would be an interesting experiment for Minneapolis to go > without zoning for ten years or so....it would save the taxpayers money > .....and maybe I could buy some wine or beer a block or two from my > house. ...and as someone else pointed out, you also get all of the other things that such lack of zoning provides unrestricted growth of: * Liquer stores * Pawn shops * Bars * Massage parlors * Naughty book/video stores * Bath houses * Cottage industries involving toxic chemicals run out of homes * 'Duplexes' in traditionally single-family neighborhoods In other words, all of the things people don't want to live right next door to. Whoever lives next to any of the above gets to deal with the chronic traffic problems. These pressures created zoning codes in the first place! Don't get me wrong, mixed-use neighborhoods are a good thing IMHO. Even small-scale strips of commercial districts such as East Lake or Chicago Ave do good work for this. The old, 'street-car strips' I believe they were called. Just so long as it doesn't pollute the neighborhood in terms of, traffic, noise, air-quality, morals, or property-values. Greg Riedesel South St. Paul Stacatto signals of constant information A loose affiliation of millionares, and billionares, baby These are the days of miracle and wonder -- Boy in the Bubble, Paul Simon _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
