[spenczar5]

Why not? It sounds like you think this is obvious, but it isn’t to me.

I live in an area with occasional grandfathered-in exceptions to zoning rules. There’s a cafe run out of a house, and a butcher shop run on a residential street corner between houses. And its absolutely lovely!

I would have no problem with people making things (“a factory”) next to a school.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

This is a perfect reason why most zoning sucks - but not all zoning sucks. Current zoning prevents most neighborhoods from being walkable. You can't have cafes and grocery stores near most houses.

But replace cute cafe in your example with a landfill or a cement plant and see if it's still awesome.

This is why some zoning is good.

[spenczar5]

I previously lived next to a cement plant, actually, in Brooklyn - the Ferrara Brothers one, now shut down. It was literally adjacent to my apartment, out the back window. And you know what? I didn’t mind one bit. I really loved that neighborhood.

[stackedinserter]

You can have a little park between grocery stores and houses. I live in a neighborhood like this and have all necessary amenities in 5-10 minutes of walk.

[zzzeek]

> I would have no problem with people making things (“a factory”) next to a school.

yes you would, if it were a large plastics manufacturer bringing large amounts of truck traffic and noise pollution and spewing carcinogenic PCB compounds into local atmosphere.

[spenczar5]

Zoning is not the same as regulation. We shouldn’t be spewing carcinogenic PCBs anywhere.

Gigantic factories don’t want to be on small residential streets anyway because they cant fit the trucks in, so I think that argument cuts the other way - there are natural forces that deter that stuff.

[kmbfjr]

Zoning exists as a common protection of property values. You may have no problem living next to a solid waste disposal site, but if they built one next to a home you owned for twenty years, you might come to appreciate zoning.

Make no mistake, the protection is more often than not for the local tax base. There more than enough examples of zoning changes approved because the change offers a multiple of new tax revenue.

[zzzeek]

yet commercial zoning regulations exist for some reason. if "natural forces" prevent all negative outcomes, why do they exist ?

[spenczar5]

I don’t see how I claimed that natural forces prevent all negative outcomes. Sorry, you don’t seem interested in understanding each others’ views here…

[zzzeek]

your view seemed to be pretty clearly, "commercial zoning is unnecessary for the problem of building factories next to schools", based on your phrase "Gigantic factories don’t want to be on small residential streets anyway because they cant fit the trucks in, so I think that argument cuts the other way - there are natural forces that deter that stuff. ", meaning, "natural forces" would "deter" "that stuff", in this case "that stuff" being building factories next to schools. Sorry to be pedantic but I'm not quite sure what it is I'm not understanding.

if you're saying, "I was just arguing that one exact example, i didnt say natural forces help for all kinds of other problems that commercial zoning is meant to help", well OK, so I think commercial zoning is necessary for even a less-than-gigantic, but nevertheless distruptive, noisy, and polluting manufacturing facilities being built inappropriately close to schools and residential areas which may nevertheless still be on roads that are fairly or fully accessible by truck traffic". After all the truck traffic could enter in the front of the building's property and the back and sides of the building's property abut said schools and homes in any case. just go look at any commercial property with a lot of trucking and movement going on, it doesn't take much imagination to see how such a thing can and quite often does abut residential areas in any case.

[spenczar5]

Thanks for explaining more fully, this is helpful.

Yeah, I was trying to say that factories specifically want good road access, so zones aren't necessary for that one exact example - your second paragraph. Sorry for being unclear with the phrase "that stuff," which seems to have sent us in the wrong direction.

You say they may be constructed in residential areas anyway - like, maybe the roads are good enough in a neighborhood. I agree with this, but then I'm not seeing what the problem with the factory is. If it's noisy, impose noise restrictions. If it's polluting, impose pollution restrictions. But I don't have any beef with people making stuff as a matter of course.

My position is mostly that zones are the wrong tool for the job. I wish we were more forgiving of mixed-use neighborhoods. If someone wants to run a 3D printing shop next door to a school, more power to 'em.

[pessimizer]

If you think your example was an exception, what was the use of it? It seemed like evidence to support the claim that there are "natural forces that deter that stuff."

[blondin]

the GP made a valid point for zoning: a safe environment for schools. but this comment and the other one are veering away from that main point.

of course we don't want anything carcinogenic or that dangerous anywhere where people live.

that doesn't invalidate GP's main point that schools need safe and calm environments.

[bcrl]

Maybe companies shouldn't be allowed to spew toxic carcinogens into the atmosphere so that wouldn't matter?

[zzzeek]

how about a landfill. ever been to one? they smell quite awful. nothing illegal about them, and they would pretty much ruin a junior high school right next door.

[bcrl]

And they're a horrible mistake of history that was a bad idea. The planet is a closed loop system with limited resources. Our use of those limited resources should be closed loop as well.

[zzzeek]

unfortunately there is no means for that to happen right away. but of course if there weren't any landfills, we would no longer need them to be mentioned in zoning regulations.

[pessimizer]

You should live next to a dog food factory or a bunch of chicken houses. Things don't have to be dangerous to create a situation that you don't want to be living next to.

[F35Machinist]

The net result of relaxing zoning would be more residential housing built, not industrial. Industrial parks around the united states are sitting fallow while housing is being bid up to the moon. Demolishing houses to build a dog food factory would be very unprofitable since you would be replacing high value land use with low value land use. What you are saying is not a good argument for strict zoning, because your hypothetical scenario isn't realistic.

[bcrl]

Zoning mistakes have also resulted in the death of vibrant neighborhoods. Having mixed residential and commercial zoning enables things like grocery, corner and hardware stores that make a good place to live even better.

Zoning shouldn't be able to limit how high containers are stacked. If the facility operates in a safe way consistent with OHSA laws, the municipality should come in with a half baked zoning law that prohibits an otherwise reasonable operation from working effectively.

In my travels I have found that many communities across the US seem to generally fear use of height. I've always found this odd compared to rest of the world. Maybe it's just because land is cheap, but it does tend to mean that zoning laws, which try to codify standard practice, do end up overreaching on this particular issue.

[Ekaros]

Or a farm using natural fertilisers... They do look lovely part of the year, others not so much.

[Denvercoder9]

> I would have no problem with people making things (“a factory”) next to a school.

A factory isn't just "making things", though. There might be semi's coming and going making traffic more dangerous, there could be materials left out that are dangerous to kids if they wander through the wrong fence, maybe there'll be loud noises that are detrimental to kids' concentration during tests.

There's plenty of reasons industry is usually put outside of towns.

[8note]

Industrial processes have a large surface area of different risks and hazards, and physical distance from where people live is a good way to mitigate all of them. Eg. Explosions, toxic chemical spills, electrical noise, air pollution etc.

They also need heavy transport, which wears out road infrastructure much more quickly than light vehicles. Keeping residential streets largely clear of heavy traffic means you can focus repairs and replacements of road surfaces in the industrial areas.

Zoning isnt the only way to solve these problems, but it's a good one

[spenczar5]

It seems like this would depend a lot on the industry, and on scale. If somebody is, I don't know, assembling board games, I think that sounds fine next to a school. If they're refining crude oil, well, that sounds more likely to have the problems you describe.

But "zoning" attempts to resolve those issues by carving territory up, not by requiring a particular physical distance. Zoning maps have boundaries which still have the problems you describe, right?

It seems a lot more reasonable to target the specific issues (noise, air pollution, etc - the stuff you descibed) rather than attack this via zones.

Of course, you said a similar thing too, so we probably 80% agree. But can you explain the remaining 20% - when is zoning ever a good way to solve these problems?

Further - is there a case to be made for zoning aside from moving really heavy industry away from really residential neighborhoods? My city has dozens of zones, carefully segregating walkable retail regions from single-family homes, which doesn't seem so defensible.

[andbberger]

Zoning is a terrible terrible way to solve the heavy goods transport problem the states have. Fines proportional to vehicle wear would be a better way to do it, incentivizing use of industrial rail spurs. Switzerland is the place to look for inspiration on this.

[karaterobot]

That must be so, since you said it. Do you acknowledge, though, that many people would not like a factory next to their house? How about a foundry? How about an airport? And do you think that people's preferences ought to be taken into account by their local government? If so, there's no argument here, you just have your own opinion.

[spenczar5]

I am asking to be convinced ("why not?"). I'm not trying to convince you myself :)

There are alternative mechanisms for getting peoples' local preferences. City- or county-wide zoning maps rarely change, and - at least in Seattle - don't seem to respond to individual citizens desires or concerns in the way you imply. Are zones really the right tool for the job?

[pessimizer]

The massive administrative burden of making every piece of property a special case where everyone nearby has to be interviewed, then their interests quantified and compared and a final judgment made sounds like a lawyer's wet dream.

Instead, we have zoning, where we can say "build your factory here if you don't want to worry about residential complaints" or "build your house here if you don't want a noxious odor, noise, and constant semi traffic bothering you."

[karaterobot]

Well, you did say you wouldn't mind if there was a factory next to a school. My point is that most people probably wouldn't want that, because it would be dangerous at worst and disruptive at best, and it's generally considered the job of governments to prevent that kind of thing. Whether that happens in practice in specific locations is another issue completely, as is what individual citizens want to happen.

If you think that there are situations where preventing some kinds of things (say, a toxic landfill) from being constructed next to other kinds of things (say, a preschool) is desirable, and that there should be rules around that, and that most people want an elected government to make and enforce those rules, that ought to explain why the commenter you responded to said zoning is important. Even if you disagree with any of those clauses, I think you'd understand why they felt that way.

[kiklion]

Even if there are businesses that you don’t want, it can be solved outside of broad strokes zoning.