Redesigning small towns by revising our zoning laws

Posted: March 14th, 2010

I think our local zoning laws have a much larger impact on our lives than we sometimes realize. These laws impact the design of the cities we live in. Redesigning our small towns and in turn revising these laws may provide us the opportunity to address some of our societies problems.

I’ve been recently traveling to a lot of different places within the United States. I was in Boston, Massachusetts; New York, New York; Conway, Arkansas and San Francisco, California. Most of the cities mentioned here are large cities with the exception of Conway where I grew up. In the large cities the zoning is really compact. I assume from economic pressures.

In most places in the large cities you have shops intermingled with residential areas. Everything is close together and you can do most everything you need just by walking around. In fact, you’re often forced to walk around. You couldn’t drive everywhere if you wanted to. There’s no parking available.

In Conway the experience is a bit different. It’s a typical small town in America. It has a population a little over 50,000. It has a couple of Walmarts, plenty of strip malls, three universities and all the chain stores and restaurants you could ever want.

Not to insult the local population of Conway, but I’ve noticed a distinct difference in the health of the people who live there. In the larger cities most people look to be in pretty good shape. Not everyone is a track athlete or anything like that, but on the whole people seem to be pretty healthy. In Conway the picture is a little different. Many people seem to be a little on the larger side.

I don’t think that people who live in the larger cities are better people. I don’t think they’re smarter, or have stronger will power or anything like that. I think it’s a result of the local zoning laws.

In Conway, everything is spread out. It’s so spread out you are almost forced to drive every where you go. It’s hard to find sidewalks even if you want to walk. I recently tried to walk to the local grocery store that wasn’t far from my dad’s house. We had sidewalks about two thirds of the time and the rest of the time we had to either walk in the street with cars honking their horns at us or walk in people’s yards (it had been recently raining, so that was a muddy option). It was a rather discouraging experience. I kind of wish we had just drove to the grocery store even though it wasn’t far and we were not carrying very much.

These small to medium size towns don’t need to be this way. Somebody intentionally created laws that promoted this type of development. Where everything is spread out, no sidewalks and you’re forced to drive (and thus rarely get the chance to walk and get exercise throughout your day).

Interestingly enough, this might all be changing. At least in certain parts of Conway. Thankfully there are some local business men who are putting in serious sums of money into revitalizing the previously dead downtown area. This is great because it’s one of the few areas of the city that is more densely zoned to promote walking. Plus, they’re pushing for a change in the zoning laws to allow for residential housing (apartments) to be mixed in with the commercial areas.

People who live in these more densely zoned areas will be more prone to walk because it’ll be easier to walk than to drive! This type of zoning also had advantages that are particularly useful to students and the elderly. Cash strapped students can save themselves the expense of needing a car. The elderly will have access to everything they need without having to use a car. This helps keep them active and independent.

There are downsides to more densely zoned areas. Noise pollution is definitely one of them. It’s one I’m struggling with right now. My downstairs neighbors like to throw late night parties on Thursdays. That doesn’t work out very well because I have work on Friday morning. We’re working with them and our landlord to educate them on the importance of being respectful with the noise level. They’re getting better about it, but it’s a constant struggle.

If you live in an area with zoning laws that cause everything to be really spread out, maybe you might want to consider talking to your local politicians and request more compact zoning laws. If you live in the suburbs, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to walk out your door and run into a handful of local restaurants within a 15 minute walk? At least from an environmental standpoint, it’d beat driving 40 miles to the big city to find a restaurant.

Then again, maybe this is just a big city mentality trying to force it’s mindset on a small town that is perfectly content just the way it is.

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