Zoning
We tend to think of zoning codes as minor annoyances. Serious mistake. Zoning codes and building codes are probably the most important laws.

This realization started with a WUWT article on the likely replacement of "global warming" pseudoscience by water usage as fashionable tyranny. Most of the WUWT commenters recommended More Libertarianism. More Hayek. Let The Market Clear. NO! Exactly wrong! Water usage has been the subject of laws for thousands of years, and the data is complete and definitive. You can't let "the market" handle water. When you allow Las Vegas and Phoenix to expand without limit, you get tremendous problems.

Then I read a Then vs Now feature in the local paper. Featured a small informal settlement under the Monroe Bridge, which had become a semi-permanent neighborhood in the 1940s even though it was on public land and had no streets or utilities. My first thought was that it was a nice piece of spontaneous organization, and shouldn't have been torn down. Then I expanded the notion and realized why it had to go. If you allow spontaneous settlements to grow without limit, you end up with favelas.

We think of zoning and building codes solely in neighborhood terms. When they work properly they prevent situations like this:



which is a good thing or a bad thing, depending on which structure you own!

In fact zoning codes are genomes. They are descriptions of the various purposes that must be served by the parts of a civic 'organism', sometimes accompanied by specific descriptions of the structures. They are at least as important as other kinds of laws, maybe the most important laws of all. Good zoning can solve many problems, and bad zoning can create unnecessary disasters.

Good zoning isn't necessarily strict zoning. In some cases the law should stand back and let Nature work or Let The Markets Clear; in other cases the law should firmly restrain Nature and Markets.

Examples:

School massacres. Gun-free zones. Lethally bad zoning.

"Endangered" "species" actions that reinsert predators like wolves and grizzlies. Civilization depends on zoning the predators far away from livestock and humans. Cows here, wolves there. Forcing wolves into cow zones is Satanic sabotage of civilization.

Free trade. Intentional sabotage of natural economic zoning. People and countries have sorted themselves by skill and preference into industrial and professional and agricultural zones. Free trade arbitrarily moves entire zones into cheaper countries, leaving poor people in rich countries with no zone where their skills are usable.

Die-Versity laws. Also intentional sabotage. Die-Versity arbitrarily forces people into workplaces and neighborhoods where they will fail, causing tragedy for both the intruders and the intrudees. Without the forcing, these things tend to sort themselves out. They don't sort into the categories required by Betty Friedan's theories or Derrick Bell's theories, but that's good because those theories are Satan. Natural sorting moves toward an optimal situation, with most people doing what they do best. (Obviously it never reaches optimum, because life never does.)

Insane folks on the streets. 'Patient rights' and deinstitutionalization are bad zoning. Asylums are good zoning. When crazies are in asylums, everyone is safer and happier.

Natural disasters. Many are pure zoning problems because their boundaries are perfectly well known IN ADVANCE. If you build below sea level, you WILL get whomped by typhoons. If you build in a flood plain, you WILL get flooded by rivers or downpours. If you avoid those places, you WILL NOT get flooded.

Increased forest fires: Predictable zoning problem. Build inside forests, guaranteed destruction. Keep forests and houses separate, and the forests are free to do their own thing.

Other natural disasters are less geographically predictable, but good building codes can still help. Proper construction can save your life in a tornado or earthquake.

Crime: Partly solvable by zoning and codes. Note the Bratton approach to policing, the Broken Window Effect. By filling the streets with good people and filling intact lighted windows with watching faces, you can make a neighborhood nearly immune to crime.

With all of that in mind, it's amazing that we pay so little political attention to zoning. We should pay more... WAIT! NOOOOO!!!! Zoning often works pretty well. It works well EXACTLY WHEN it happens quietly. It works BECAUSE we don't shout about it in terms of R-label and D-label slogans. Leave it alone!

Labels: Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 3:37 AM