Quote:
Originally posted by bilmore
Tell us when you've finished explaining why your particular taste in community aesthetics should trump our rights to, democratically, determine how we want our home communities to be structured.
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You're kidding me, right? I mean, weren't you just on the side of those invoking the Takings Clause?
I never said we all didn't have the right to zone our communities in particular ways, such as the one I described. What I'm not certain about is whether the zoning in towns like the one I described results from
(a) a sort of collective action problem, where the whole town ends of zoned in ways that excludes things (e.g., elderly housing) that we all think is necessary but don't want next to us;
(b) people failing to predict the detriments of low-density zoning (e.g., traffic) as accurately as they predict the benefits (which to say, the advantage of having a large lot is obvious, but the effects on traffic and shopping are less so);
(c) poor planning (and the influence of money on local politics) as rural areas are developed;
(d) different preferences on the part of the people who live in such areas.
I suspect it's a combination of all of the above, but from the towns I'm most familiar with, I see the combination of (b) and (c) as being particularly strong. When the first subdivisions go up, there's very little traffic, and still something of a small-town character, and people take all that for granted. By the time the last subdivisions go in, traffic is much worse, and the small-town feeling is gone, but the die is cast and it's too late. A few people warned about all this along the way, but who's going to tell the families who are striking it rich selling to the developers that they can't have such a big jackpot? Those families have been influential in the area for years, and the town has never had the sort of zoning that tells you what you can do with your land . . . .
