Zoning and energy

[nancylebov]

A part of "America's love affair with the car" was that zoning guaranteed that work, housing, and shopping were physically separated in a lot of the country. I grant that the culture was affecting the regulations (if that sort of separation were intolerable to the vast majority, I don't think so much local regulation would have pointed in the same direction), but the zoning was also shaping the culture.

Now that energy is getting expensive and likely to remain so and there are concerns about carbon emissions, I've been looking for calls to change the zoning, but I haven't seen anything. Have you?

Inspiration for this post: An NPR news story about how houses near employment are keeping their value, and opening a possibility that both buyers and developers were underestimating the cost of commutes.

Comments

[raincitygirl.livejournal.com]

eco-density? (http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=eco+density+plan+vancouver&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8) Not that it's the cure-all the press releases would have you believe. And it's only one city, not the entire metropolitan area. But the surrounding suburbs do seem to be building a bit denser than usual the past few years. Mind you, I think a lot of that has to do with the housing market and the insane cost of land. I guess we'll find out how eco-density works in a non-overheated, non-Olympic fevered real estate market eventually. What goes up must come down and so forth.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

I'm not American and don't live in an American city.

I live in a tenement apartment (with no elevator) in the centre of town, three floors above street-level shops and restaurants. Go into the back streets and you'll find small business units -- design and office stuff, mostly, but also things like auto shops.

This being the UK, the apartment in question is highly desirable, the part of town it's in is one of the more expensive residential areas in Scotland, and despite an overall drop in real estate prices this area is still actually going up.

Of course, gas at US $2.50 per litre ( and 3.8 litres to the US gallon) probably has something to do with this. (It's expected to hit £1.50 a litre by summer -- around US $12 a gallon.)

Living within walking distance of everything you need is a major advantage right now, and I'm just astonished at the way folks in the USA put up with enforced work/home segregation that results in them having to spend ten hours a week driving just to get to and from their workplace and buy food ...

[madfilkentist]

I read this past weekend that in Manchester, NH, you need to have one acre to keep a single chicken or other livestock animal, and a quarter acre for each additional one. The object is clearly to keep farms out of Manchester. The effect of each municipality that does this is a small contribution to (and perhaps a result of) megafarms' political power, which gives them subsidies, raises prices for us, and impoverishes farmers in exporting countries.

[dcseain.livejournal.com]

Government does silly things. Some people i know who live on 6.99 acre wanted a horse. The county told them no, because one must have 7.0 acres per horse. So, for a handful of grass, no horsey. Very silly. At the same time, i may keep up to 3 chickens in my back yard, even though i'm in a townhouse. Of course, chickens produce, and for many are, food. Horses, not so much so in our culture.

[ckd]

Next month, I will cut my commute from a 10 minute walk to a 5 minute walk + elevator ride.

Owning and insuring a car in Massachusetts is not cheap; not having to have one is basically free money.

[avram]

That bit about commutes would explain why NYC's housing market is still lively.

[dcseain.livejournal.com]

We're looking to move to Arlington in part because i like to be able to walk/transit to things, and Arlington never zoned things completely apart. Where they are apart, it arose mostly naturally. Oddly, that move will put both of us furhter from our jobs, which are near where i currently live.

Zoning in this region has altered over the last many years. One finds very high-density mixed-use development near Metro stations, and along some major bus lines. Usually within about a mile of such, slightly less in areas that were already urbanized when Metro came along. In Arlington along the Orange Line, for example, there is high-density mixed-use for about 4 blocks around the Metro line, with the buildings getting shorter into the traditional residential neighbourhoods.

My whole life, but for the time i was in Boston, i lived within a 30 minute walk of at least one grocery store and one drug store, plus assorted other useful-to-life businesses. It's something i look for, and find desirable in housing.

I find it a bit ironic that we're looking to move farther from our jobs, but quality of life outside of work matters, too.

There are a few places that never had zoning, just some weakish - usually Federally-mandated - environmental requirements. I wonder how the mix in those places differ, and how ones like that on transit lines differ from those not on transit lines.