Planetizen Posts: New Urbanism and Public Notices on the Web

I’ve posted a couple new posts to Planetizen’s Interchange blog recently:

> Should the Internet Replace Newspapers for Public Notices? Most planning and zoning ordinances require cities publish some notices in the local newspaper. In an age of newspapers decline, and with the Internet readily available, I suggest we should amend our laws.

> The Origin of New Urbanism’s Persistent Image Problem: Despite authoring a trenchant critique of contemporary urbanism and articulating a detailed, comprehensive vision for urban development, the New Urbanism movement retains a vague stigma with many American urbanists. Far more than an unfair stereotype, I argue the reputation problem runs to the core of intellectual life among American urbanists, speaking to the way our cities our developed and studied.

Zoning Out Guns

Just because the D.C. handgun ban has been overturned doesn’t mean you will ever be able to buy one in Washington. The reason? Zoning. This from the Wall Street Journal:

Washington has no federally licensed gun stores, so nowhere in the city can residents buy a handgun legally. Under federal law, buying one in neighboring Maryland or Virginia isn’t an option either. If gun dealers sell a firearm to a nonresident, they have to ship it to a licensed dealer in the purchaser’s home state, which then conducts the relevant background checks. “Without a dealer, there’s no place to ship the gun to,” said Mike Campbell, a spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

It is unlikely that Washington will get any new dealers, either. Federal licensing requirements mandate that would-be dealers meet local guidelines and zoning ordinances. Representatives of each of the district’s eight council wards said they would vigorously oppose a gun shop in their area. They also said discussions had already begun over which regulations they might use to keep one from opening.

This approach has been used successfully elsewhere – as of 2005 Minneapolis only had one store, and Washington has already largely eradicated nude strip clubs through onerous zoning requirements:

While the license allows an owner to open a club with nude dancing anywhere in the city that has commercial zoning, a club must sit at least 600 feet away from any schools, community centers and housing. Community members can protest the opening of such a club, and it must get approval from the District’s Alcoholic Beverage Control Board.

The only problem? As of now, D.C. Zoning Code says nothing about gun shops. Another issue to throw into the mix over in the D.C. zoning update …

The Wrong Way the Solicit Participation on the Web

I noticed two flawed attempts to solicit public participation on the web recently.

First, on Tuesday Hillary Clinton said the following during her nationally televised speech: “Now the question is, where do we go from here … But this has always been your campaign, so to the 18 million people who voted for me and to our many other supporters out there of all ages, I want to hear from you. I hope you’ll go to my website at HillaryClinton.com and share your thoughts with me and help in any way that you can.” If you read it closely you’ll see she’s only asking her supporters to visit her website, but you can be forgiven if like me you got the impression she was casting a wider net. As the DCeiver noted, when you visit her website the only option is to sign a petition declaring “I am with you, Hillary, and I am proud of everything we are fighting for.” The form includes an “optional” box for comments. I guess asking her supporters to “sign a pledge offering me your unconditional support” just wouldn’t have had the same ring in the speech.

Second, the D.C. Office of Zoning has opened a commenting feature on their website, where visitors are allowed to review and comment on the proposed policy changes to the city’s zoning code. Visitors must download a 115KB PDF of the proposed policy, which is embedded with HTML links to this webpage with boxes for comments.

Sharing policies, soliciting comments, and allowing visitors to view other’s comments are all good things. However, a number of things about the implementation bug me. First, never require someone to download a PDF unless you have no other option. In particular, documents containing text can be easily displayed on a webpage. In general, PDFs are a hassle to download on a slow connection, and for various reasons can cause browser crashes. If the draft policy were presented on a webpage, the boxes for comments could be located near the policy. The current structure requires you to switch back and forth between both documents. Lastly, offering a long page of input boxes all in one place will probably depress the response rate. Breaking it up into just a few pages or fewer fields would make it seem more manageable.

The technology and techniques of soliciting input online are rapidly evolving, but being honest about what you’re interested in and making the system as easy to use as possible are two good places to start.

Review: A Better Way to Zone

I have mixed feelings about zoning, which may explain my thoughts about Donald Elliott’s new book about it, A Better Way to Zone. A land use law consultant in Colorado, Elliott’s book is dedicated to making “simplicity and understandability not just an aspiration but a guiding principle in zoning.” While I agree with much of the sentiment of the book, I’m not sure he’s struck upon the new way to zone he seeks.

Organized around the goal of making zoning “better, more efficient, and more understandable,” the book contains a brief history of zoning, a critique of the current system as used by most big cities, a discussion the legal framework and values of good governance, and finally a discussion of “ten principles” to improve zoning. Filled with lists of reasons, lessons, principles, and cross-references, this book is obviously the work of an order-oriented legal mind.

Elliott’s concise accounts of the origins and logic of most cities’ “Euclidean Hybrid Zoning” would serve as a good primer on the subject for students or citizens new to the field. Convinced that “almost no one outside of city government, zoning lawyers, and very committed citizen activists can explain how the system works” Elliott passionately argues “zoning ordinances should not be understandable only to lawyers or zoning staff; they should be understandable to average homeowners.” I think the mantra about simplicity is the most important part of the book, and completely agree with Elliott that “the more the public knows, the better they can participate at the policy- and rule-making level.” Let’s hope his call for simplicity and transparency is heeded.

The book’s “10 principles for more livable cities” will come as no surprise to informed readers: 1. more flexible uses (simplifying the number and type of uses regulated), 2. the mixed-use middle (simplify number of zones, create mixed-use zones at the heart of the code), 3. attainable housing (reduce regulatory barriers to affordable housing), 4. mature area standards, 5. living with nonconformities (legalize some nonconforming uses), 6. dynamic development standards, 7. negotiated large developments, 8. depoliticized final approvals, 9. Better use of the internet (he oddly uses the word “webbing” for this section, which I’ve never heard used this way), 10. scheduled maintenance.

While most of the topics discussed under these headings are sensible and needed reforms, all together they don’t add up to anything close to a “new” way to zone. In fact, Elliott is convinced our strange combination of conventional Euclidian zoning, planned unit development regulation, and form-based zoning, will continue. While some communities have implemented the form-based SmartCode, I agree with Elliott it doesn’t appear likely it will totally replace the existing tools in most communities.

This brings us to my mixed feelings about zoning in general.

On the one hand, zoning has caused lots of problems. Its separation of uses has encouraged driving and low-density development. Its parking requirements cover the land with impervious parking lots. It has been used as a tool of racial and economic exclusion in communities across the country. When used to require low density development, it consumes land and worsens global warming. Worst of all, it has often failed to achieve one of its original impetus: to separate polluting industries from residences.

On the other hand, just because a tool has been used poorly doesn’t mean the tool itself is flawed. It is the most important source of power for urban planners, and it can be used to sculpt the public realm, create affordable housing, and genuinely improve cities.

The problem with A Better Way to Zone is the book is mostly unaware of such nuance. In a discussion about an alternative to conventional zoning, the author observes that there may be parts of the city suitable for experimentation, but “in and around stable middle- and high-income neighborhoods, there will still be a demand for zones that produce more predictable development.” The reasons or implications for this go undiscussed. There exists an intellectual chasm between historians who observe zoning has been a highly effective tool of exclusion to the detriment of our cities and types like Elliott who are generally sanguine on its basic foundations. The book’s central strength — its focus on making zoning with simple, efficient, and understandable — is also its central flaw. After all, a simple, efficient, and understandable zoning code may not necessarily achieve a desirable, just, or sustainable outcome. For those we must turn elsewhere.

> A Better Way to Zone: official website, purchase from publisher
> Amazon.com: A Better Way to Zone: Ten Principles to Create More Livable Cities