POP QUIZ
I'd like to start this post with a few questions:
- How many of you know the zoning designation of your property?
- What, exactly, does your zoning designation mean (i.e. Do you know what uses are allowed in that district? What are the design requirements and restrictions? How many people can live in one dwelling unit? How much off-street parking is required?)?
- What are the zoning designations of the districts around yours?
- Can you answer any of the questions in No. 2 for those districts?
Most people can answer the first one or two. But very few think about questions 3 and 4, which are almost more important. I'll get to why in a few paragraphs.
URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING: THE SECRET ART OF BACHELORS
Back when I was an undergraduate, I was chatting with my sister about my career path. When she asked what I'd chosen for a major, I told her "Urban and Regional Planning."
"What's that?" she replied.
"Basically, city planning," I said.
"So you, like, tell people where to put sidewalks?"
Well, yes and no. Some city planners do tell people where to put sidewalks. And houses. And Walmarts. And sheep, and trees, and college students. Planning is one of the most misunderstood career fields I know of, and not in a way that adds an air of mystique to what I do. Sometimes it's even difficult to locate your local planning office, because they've titled it, say, "community development".
Most of what people think of as municipal planning actually falls under the category of "public works" or "civil engineering" or some other similarly-titled discipline. In my jurisdiction, the public works department handles what's known as "pipes and pavement" almost exclusively. Putting in a new sewer? That requires more engineering than I've ever taken, or frankly would want to take. Worried that the dirt from your neighbor's pool installation is oozing on to your land? We have a storm water division for that.
This is not to say that planners don't handle those things. Some do. So exactly what service is it that I, or most planners for that matter, provide? Our domain is a mysterious document known as "The Comprehensive Plan." The comprehensive plan (or "comp plan") is, in essence, the vision of and for the city, county, or port district and those under its jurisdiction. The comp plan is built upon a massive amount of citizen input. You ask the people what they expect from their city, now and in the future, and lay that out as a set of guidelines to steer development so that at some far-off date you have the city you envisioned. Of course, by then, the flying cars and space elevators have completely negated the vision of the people that helped create that comp plan all those years ago.
Supporting the comp plan is the zoning code. The zoning code divides your jurisdiction into different zoning districts, each with its own particular allowances and prohibitions regarding the use of land. The four typical basic zoning designations (and I am completely over-simplifying these concepts here) are: Residential, Commercial, Industrial, and Public. Residential means people live there; commercial indicates people shop there; industrial signifies things are built there; and public includes government buildings and parks and such.
The purposes of these zones, in case it isn't obvious, is to group together compatible uses and separate incompatible ones. For instance, people in a single family home may not want a gravel quarry going in next door. A commercial center might not want to locate close to a neighborhood of homes occupied by families, but would want to possibly be sited by large apartment complexes. This is due to the amount of opposition said shopping center would face from the families in that neighborhood, which could result in a long and costly approval process. In contrast, the apartment complex, which is most likely populated by people looking for a convenient lifestyle who wouldn't mind not having to walk so far to the store, would probably welcome a neighborhood shopping center.
When discussing zoning--especially residential zoning--the operant word is "density." Density dictates how crammed-together people can be. In my jurisdiction, our lowest-density residential zone only allows for seven dwelling units per acre, and limits lots to no less than 6,000 square feet per residence. In our highest density zone, you can build 44 dwelling units per acre, and the lot-area-per-unit dimension is 1,000 square feet--500 if you can get the proper administrative approval.
This is why questions 3 and 4 are so important. Sure, that lovely wooded area with the ducks swimming in the pond is beautiful now, but what's it zoned? Who owns it? Do you know their intentions for that property? Without getting too technical (and thereby avoiding explaining terms like "highest and best use" and "best management practices"), it is important that you understand that the person owning that idyllic parcel of land providing your incredible view may plan too plow it all under and put in a staggeringly huge apartment complex. And if that developer complies with code, you might not be able to do a damn thing about it.
BLAMESTORMING
"Wait a minute," you say, "You're the planner! You're supposed to be a bleeding-heart liberal who hates things like Walmart and student housing! Stop this!"
I'm going to let you in on a little secret: Planners don't make the code, they only implement/apply/enforce it. Sure, we sometimes shape the regulations--drafting ordinances and resolutions that change the code, or updates and amendments to the comp plan, etc.--but we don't ratify them. We don't control what gets adopted and implemented. Elected officials (like mayors and city councils or county commissions) and appointed boardmembers (like those on planning commissions and Boards of Adjustment) are the people who establish the laws. People that the citizens of your jurisdiction chose to represent their best interests. Even when planners suggest a change to the code, it's usually in response to an issue that recurs frequently enough to indicate that those regulations are in conflict with the needs of the community.
Just like everybody else, we have to follow the code. What that means is: no, we cannot make a special exception for you, no matter how minor your project is, and no, we cannot keep a developer (who has an approved site plan and all the correct permits) from building a monstrous multi-family housing development near your single-family home just because it would be ugly and noisy. (And before your start griping, yes, we consider things like ugly and noisy when we approve site plans and permits and such; if we've done our jobs properly, some of the ugly and noisy should have been mitigated before approval). But we cannot act against the code--the code put in place through citizen action.
Planners have lots of fun acronyms for such inflexible attitudes: NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard), BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere, Not Anyhow), and LULU (Locally Unwanted Land Use), just to name a few. Most planners I know are actually progress-oriented. My own jurisdiction is considered developer-friendly, and we often joke about being "great facilitators". But planners are a smart bunch. We understand concepts like "sprawl is bad" and "boxy is ugly," and we do our best to guide development in a manner that helps promote a sense of community and a sustainable and ecologically-sound ideology.
Trust me--we know, long before you start writing your angry letter or dialing the phone in a button-mashing rage to vent about that gigantic apartment complex being built where the duck pond used to be (mitigated on-site at a 3:1 ratio), that we are going to hear from you, that you are not going to like what we have to tell you, and that the code is going to support our position, because we've spent many hours studying it to answer a thousand claims of injustice just like yours.
TURN-ABOUT AND ALL THAT
We hear a lot in my profession about private property rights. You should damn well be able to do whatever you want with your land, because you own it and why is the government all up in your business? Now I want you to stop and actually think about that. What if your property rights allowed you to do whatever you want with your land? Go ahead and build a 5,200-square-foot three-story house with a garage for the RV, and put it all right up on your property line. Oh, and replace the lawn with mud and broken glass.
The problem is, see, that your rights end at your property line. So your neighbor sees your giant house with its sparkly mud pit and thinks, "Well I sure as Hell don't want to live next to that monstrosity. I'm outta here." And so he moves to somewhere less insane and develops his land into a student housing complex with accompanying pig farm. "But he can't do that!" you cry, "Now my massive monument to conspicuous consumption is worth nothing! My property values are crap! He has no right!"
Ah, but he does have the right--because there are no rules. Nobody has said that maybe pig-farm apartment complexes and mansions don't co-exist so good. This is why today we have planners to tell us that the masses have spoken, and the masses have said that you can't have a deck that covers more than 45 percent of your property, that you can't put six unrelated people in one studio apartment and that the developers of the giant apartment complex being built by your house have to landscape their property in a way that is both attractive and that lessens the visual impact on your property.
My point here is that your local planners are listening to you. But they are also listening to your neighbors, and to the big-box-store developer who thinks your town needs a new S-Mart. The two points they really drive home in those planning classes I took are: planners plan with people, not for people; and that you are never going to please everybody, so just hope to please enough of 'em that your life doesn't become one long Complain-a-Thon.
Which is the subject of my next post.
