Zoning can increase the cost of building new structures. Zoning can work against historic mixed use neighborhoods in older communities. To a certain extent, zoning limits the development potential of previously existing land uses and structures that do not conform with the zonings standards. Research shows that overly restrictive zoning makes it hard for developers to build new housing, driving up rents and prices. Today few sets of zoning regulations appear in tomes of fewer than 500 pages. This view is supported by Roscoe H. Jones, Houstons Director of City Planning. According to this philosophy, urban planners were assumed to have enough wisdom to forecast, at least in broad brush strokes, the future spatial organization of the city. Contact affected neighborhood groups, property owners associations, interest groups, clubs, and others who have an interest in opposing the rezoning or development project. In a system based on the inviolability of private property rights, the laws of nuisance would prevent the dispersion of invasive odors, or dust particles. Olympia is considering zoning changes that would make it easier to build things like duplexes, triplexes and mother-in-law apartments in areas currently dominated by single-family homes. (Note that apartments are only allowed in a small section of the city, near the commercial corridor, while about two-thirds of land is reserved for single-family homesa pattern typical of many cities.) A challenger will flyspeck the zoning record to find a defect. The success of each enterprise rests, in great part, upon the skill in such zoning. If the grocer discovers, for example, that apples and oranges sell better in close proximity, or that the juxtaposition of corn and peas detracts from the sale of both, without any offsetting benefits on the remainder of the stock, he can profit by incorporating this information into his zoning decision making. Zoning can help to implement the community goals and objectives of a comprehensive plan. We can not speak with certainty of the value an owner will place on his home in the future; it is even less possible to assess the worth a future hypothetical buyer will give it. A fall in the price of wood, an increase in the market rate of interest, the sale of publicly held lands, technological improvements in prefabrication methods can all reduce housing prices. But a zoning system, especially a flexible or reformed one, can change the uses to which a land parcel may be put at any time. Although this might appear to some as fair and judicious, the flaws in it are grave. So, you find yourself in opposition to a proposed rezoning or a development project. A weighted average across all the zones? Assessing whether housing production in practice matches zoning rules on paperand understanding the reason for any deviationsis extremely difficult. Ability to incorporate the needs of a changing future is simply incompatible with patchwork changes as reality confronts the master plan. Even the maintenance of single-family neighborhoods by zoning statutes is questionable: by keeping land and buildings in the same use over time, zoning can promote neighborhood decay and speed the demise of the single family neighborhood. While citizens have a clear and obvious right to have their homes protected from physical damage, this does not apply to the value of their property. While zoning can help achieve valuable social goals, excessively restrictive zoning contributes to the rising affordability problem. Thus it appears that if error and hence the need for correction lies anywhere, it is not with the rapacious builder who places strains on public services, but rather with those charged with the provision of the infrastructure: those in the government sector.
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