Everything Is Awesome: Zoning Ordinances

I'm weird and I like weird things. Because I am a narcissist with a blog, you probably know this by now, but I'll repeat it, just because I'm that self-obsessed.

When you are the lone resident of Grace World, Everything Is Awesome. I'm sure I've mentioned the awesomeness of fruit history before, and the awesomeness of school architecture, but there are many awesome things to be experienced in Grace World. Like highway rest stops. When I was in high school, I told my mom that when I grew up and because a photojournalist, my first project would be to document the intricacies of life along the interstate, complete with close-up photos of disgusting bathroom tiling and roadkill squashed flat in the parking lot. Having experienced the pain of upstate New York "rest stops" with no AC or sewage facilities, rest stops are no longer quite that awesome, unfortunately. Traffic congestion is still pretty fascinating, though.





I was bemoaning my curse of eccentricity to Dan a while back. What was the good, I mused existentially, of spending time and energy learning about parking lot configurations if nobody without either a city planning degree or an interest in sustainable development gave a poo? What was I supposed to do, attend city board meetings and be creepy? Or was I supposed to increase my social repellent factor by multiples of two?

Then I remembered. I have a blog with at least four devoted readers. Muahahaha.

So, in this episode of Everything Is Awesome, I unpack the mysteries and hidden beauties of zoning ordinances, and how it helped cause the housing bubble and widespread economic recession. I actually wrote a paper about that, complete with supply and demand graphs and other economic graphics that are confusing as all get out because you can label the axes with anything you want, even X = Squashed Squirrels and Y = Flattened Ferrets.

Zoning ordinances are local regulations that restrict the types of development that can occur in certain areas. Zoning laws make it impossible for a developer to plunk a sewage plant next to a Whole Foods, or dig an in-ground swimming pool in the inner city. In general, zoning ordinances are good things for those of us who find the compartmentalization of our lives to be awesome. I certainly do enjoy living on a nice residential street with a front yard and a speed limit of 35 mph. I wouldn't want my children to have to worry about falling into the huge stone quarry next door, now would I?

Each locality has its own set of zoning ordinances. The area is broken into zones which can only be used in a particular way. Definitions vary between localities, but generally zones are categorized thus.

Rural Residential. A zone where there are farms and lots of green spaces. Residents and government officials usually want to keep the area farmy and green, so new development is usually limited to residential development on large lots. If you see dead animals lying in the middle of the road or if your allergies are killing you, you're probably in a rural residential zone.
Low Density Residential. A zone with a little less green space and not as many (if any) farms. There are allowances for parks and recreational spaces. Houses can be built on slightly smaller lots. If you see housing developments and just jammed on the breaks to keep from killing some biker without a safety helmet, you're probably in a low density residential.
Medium Density Residential. Usually an older suburban zone. Houses are smaller, there's not as much space between the houses, and most of the residences are straight out of the Sixties. The neighborhood is busier. Apartment buildings are A-OK. I live in a medium density residential area, so my taxes are lower, my yard is smaller, and ornamental outdoor lighting in the neighborhood is limited.
Mixed Use/Heavy Density Residential. A nice way of saying older area, probably with lots of row homes, maybe a bar (or two) on your block, and please flee and take your taxes elsewhere. Houses are close together, you might not have a yard or street parking, and somebody can open a restaurant in the attached dwelling next door. New development in this zone is limited, because there's really not much room for more development.
Commercial. This is where the Wal-Mart Supercenter opened last year. Commercial zones are a pain because there's traffic and fat people coming out of Wal-Mart, but everybody shops in the commercial zones. Localities make lots of money from commercial zones. Some commercial development occurs in established commercial zones, but often low density or rural residential areas are rezoned as commercial areas to try to squeeze more money out of a low-performing (too farmy or too green) area. This is why they're opening a new Wal-Mart Supercenter in the middle of the cornfield.
Industrial. This is where they put the sewage treatment plants, which is rather nice of the zoning board. New residences are prohibited in these areas, although you might see one or two older houses that were built before the industrial zoning. (These houses are often crumbling and the residents are probably dead. Because you'd be dead too if you lived next door to the sewage treatment plant.) Don't go into industrial zones because they smell bad.
Preservation. If there's something green or farmy that you as a member of the zoning board really, really like, you just might be able to slap a preservation label on the zone and you'll be good to go. The preservation zone is full of stuff that is supposed to be preserved, like trees and Smokey Bear. Don't go into preservation zones unless you want to die in a forest fire or you want to go camping. Same thing, usually. New buildings are rarely allowed in preservation zones, because that would sully the land and Smokey would come and take out his vengeance upon you.
Incentive. Grace hates, hates, hates incentive zones, because they always seem to be done in the stupidest way possible. An incentive zone is an area where somebody (the feds, the local government, etc.) is providing an incentive to somebody, anybody, please, to develop the area. Like when you go into a town and are directed to go to the Arts District or the Downtown Business Center and when you get there all you see is a boarded-up pizza store and some unsavory-looking people standing in front of the boarded-up pizza store for some shady reason. This is, of course, a gross oversimplification, but in Grace World, just because you dub an area the Great Up-And-Coming Arts District doesn't mean squat unless you actually have art that isn't graffiti. You can often identify the incentive zones when you see a random high-end steak restaurant in the middle of urban blight.

Those are the zones. And now for the tale of American economic ruination.

Yeah, I know that the recession was caused by the housing bubble bursting, sub-prime mortgages, yadda yadda yadda. But even before housing prices were increasing just because people thought they were increasing, housing prices were actually increasing because of low residential zoning ordinances gone bad.

It goes like this.

Let's say you have a bunch of fairly well-off professional families trying to escape the really high real estate prices in the major urban areas of the Northeast (I'm looking at you, New York). They decide to move out to an area where homes are cheaper, there's more space, and taxes are less taxing. Har har har. These families start moving in by the thousands into the suburban areas of the Northeast. Where should they go?

There are only four residential zones, normally. Mixed use or heavy density residential areas are often crowded, noisy, or too built-up to handle an influx of new homeowners. These are not the most appealing areas, either.

What about the medium density zones? Possibly. But these are slightly older homes, and again, there's not much room for expansion. These areas can handle some increases in population, but there's a limit.

What about low density and rural residential zones? Aha, perfect! There's room for lots of development. It's quieter, away from the city rush. It's suburbia.

And thus, the masses begin to flood into the low density and rural residential zones. But there's a catch.

Local government officials are usually more than happy to welcome new residents and new developments. It stimulates the area economically and culturally. More people pay more taxes. It's awesome. But officials (and residents) still want to keep the lower-density zones. Everybody likes the farms and nobody is saying they should all disappear, just the few that are in the way of the new Wal-Mart Supercenter. They want to preserve the natural, rural, quiet character of the area.

So there you have it. Everybody wants development. Everybody wants more residents in their locality. Everybody wants to be better off financially. And nobody wants to destroy any more farms or forests than they have to. Also, nobody wants to get on Smokey's bad side after what happened to the Awesome Development, LLC corporate offices last month.

The zoning officials meet with the development dudes. The board lays down the law. Yes, you can develop Smokey's old stomping grounds into 150+ spacious floorplan estate homes starting from the 350s. But you need to make sure that everything continues to look green and rural, so you need to build each of your homes on a 2-acre square plot of land that is half undeveloped field, one-quarter lawn, and one-quarter house. You get your development, the hordes get their houses, we get our tax money, and Smokey gets appeased. But just in case, we will need one of you to sign this document promising yourself as a human offering just in case Smokey is not satisfied with the appeasement.

The new houses going up in the low density and rural residential zones are thus bigger houses on bigger plots of land. They take more money to build. Preserving all that green space and rerouting the plumbing around the swamp takes money. The house sells for a lot of money to a family with a lot of money. And because the houses are sold on bigger plots of land, there's less land to go around for the other houses in the area yet to be developed. If there's not too much land, and there are a lot of people who want the land, the land will go up in price, and then the housing price will go up.

This cycle repeated itself thousands and thousands of time in (often) suburban areas across the country. Housing prices went up because each house had to be on a larger plot of land because there had to be lots of green space because Smokey's razor-sharp teeth. Of course there was a lot of speculation involved here as well, but zoning was a significant (and overlooked) contributor to the Great Recession.

Lessons Learned:

1. Zoning ordinances actually do change the world.
2. Only zoning boards can prevent Smokey's wrath.