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When I got my business license in a suburban city, I was chagrined to see that home-based businesses are allowed only in the single-family residential zone — so
by zach 11y ago
When I got my business license in a suburban city, I was chagrined to see that home-based businesses are allowed only in the single-family residential zone — sorry, apartment-dwellers. I'm sure many cities are the same, because why not? Who's going to complain if you say no, the existing residents or "that guy" who wants to do something unconventional? So just keep everyone happy by saying no.
And really, that "no by default" is what zoning laws are all about. City administration is only faulted for not preventing some land use that people will get up in arms about, so zoning laws are their set of hidebound insurance policies.
I think "It's a Wonderful Life" deserves a good deal of blame for this, because of how Capra illustrated the moral derangement of Bedford Falls becoming Potterville. Its main street was full of dime-a-dance saloons, floozy-filled nightclubs, billiard halls and pawn brokers. The implication was that any city with wise and moral leaders would have prevented it, which has struck fear into the heart of American cities ever since.
- jacobolus 11y ago> I think "It's a Wonderful Life" deserves a good deal of blame for this, This is a surprising hypothesis. Do you have other evidence/analysis, or is this purely speculative? For my part, I would have said that racism/classism deserves much of the blame. Especially after forced public school integration, middle-class whites wanted to live in neighborhoods where poor people would be priced out by inability to afford cars or detached houses (and kept out by racial criteria for home ownership), and thereby could also keep their local tax money from paying for services or infrastructure for “those people”. That and multiple types of massive subsidies for cars and driving – zoning, free parking, government support for cheap oil, publicly developed roads, etc.