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The Roots of Sprawl: Zoning Policies
Zoning, the principal tool for implementing local planning policies, has ironically often been a key contributor to the typical sprawl-oriented pattern of development.
American Zoning & the Physical Isolation of Uses, by Laurence Gerckens (from the Planning Commissioners Journal). A leading planning historian looks at how the isolation of land uses helped lead to sprawl.
Journalist and critic James Howard Kunstler finds zoning policies one of the principal culprits for our current sprawling land use pattern:
"Our zoning laws are essentially a manual of instructions for creating the stuff of our communities. Most of these laws have been in place only since the Second World War ... What zoning produces is suburban sprawl, which must be understood as the product of a particular set of instructions. Its chief characteristics are the strict separation of human activities, mandatory driving to get from one activity to another, and huge supplies of free parking. After all, the basic idea of zoning is that every activity demands a separate zone of its own. For people to live around shopping would be harmful and indecent. Better not even to allow them within walking distance of it."
From "Home From Nowhere" (excerpts on the Atlantic Monthly web site from Kunstler's book by the same name). For information on the book.
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