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At least in Germany zoning laws are there to prevent businesses to intrude into residential neighborhoods. That means, I get to live in an area that is not "pol

At least in Germany zoning laws are there to prevent businesses to intrude into residential neighborhoods. That means, I get to live in an area that is not "polluted" by noisy trucks driving up and down the street to deliver or collect goods - and so on. It also means, I am restricted in what I do with my own property in such, that I cannot build a factory inside my home/on my ground for the same reasons. Imho this is quite a reasonable policy. Some other zoning laws in German communities might restrict me from planting some trees while forcing me to plant a hedge from a small list of pre defined plant varieties - just to make sure the neighborhood looks homogenous. These laws do not make the slightest sense imho. Esp. as the allowed plant varieties oftentimes are not local but some stuff that is easy in handling and not that great for nature (no possibilities for birds to nest and such stuff).

davidw 10y ago
I can understand the sentiment, but I think we've gone a bit too far with it in the US. In Italy, where I lived, there were certainly residential areas, but they were very close to businesses - from our house we could walk 5/10 minutes and be at a coffee shop, supermarket, our kids schools, a tram stop, a bakery, and a few other things. In the US, you have massive residential-only neighborhoods like this: https://www.google.com/maps/@44.1036878,-121.3081349,1586a,20y,106.49h,44.73t/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@44.1036878,-121.3081349,1586a,2... It's a car or nothing. Philosophically, you can say they just designed it wrong, but I think you can also make an argument that sometimes it's best to evolve complex things, via markets, rather than attempt a big up front design and then rigidly enforce that.