|
This is not the case. We have mixed zoning in most communities. Industrial zones are usually reserved for industry. There are good reasons for that, primarily to keep noise, dust, and heavy traffic separated from residential areas. It's best not to allow residential use in an industrial zone, because it tends to promote very low quality housing. The zone I live in is residential-agricultural with a manufactured home overlay district. Permitted uses include farms, home businesses, and professional offices in homes. The major limitations are density, height, and setback restrictions. There's a moderate amount of conservation land due to wetlands and streams, and the local residents are pretty active about protecting the watersheds and quality of life. You can't open a restaurant, grocery store, or auto repair business, but there are a few grandfathered uses like that near me. As population in an area increases, the normal course is for zoning to change to permit increased density. I think most communities are best served by having areas of higher density surrounded by lower density, rather than making a uniform sprawl. Around here, the higher density, low setback zones are about three miles apart. That's where the stores are. Speaking as someone who served on a planning board for a decade: you shouldn't try to stop development - you should ease it in. If you don't it, it tends to catch up with you all at once, which is very disruptive. |
Presumably nobody wants to live in "low quality housing", and no developer wants to build housing which they can't sell; so this reads to me like a policy statement of "we'd rather that people are homeless".
Historically this has definitely been as thing -- American cities have prohibited low-income housing as a covert effort to enforce racial segregation, and in the early days of Victoria, Canada, free land grants were available to anyone who brought at least six servants with them -- but I'm not sure that such a policy has any place in modern society.