I am deeply skeptical of efforts to regulate outcomes in the market place using the land use code, zoning, and housing policy. What do I mean? Well an article by John McNellis at the Bay Area real estate blog, The Registry called Big City Dreaming points out one example: mandated commercial space. Many jurisdictions, including Seattle, require set asides for commercial space, and those set asides are typically square footage ratios that have absolutely nothing to do with demand for the space from retailers. Planners at the Department of Planning and Development (DPD), the Office of Housing, and other departments come up with some pretty random and bizarre directives about what should be required in new housing and development, like the .75 parking ratio for covered bike parking for Small Efficiency Dwelling Units (SEDUs).

Zoning itself started out with the well intended purpose of segregating noxious uses like a rendering plant from where people lived. But it’s become the crutch of the lazy planner, who these days tends to rely on incremental tweaks of layers, and layers of code based on pushing uses apart. From McNellis’ article:

Ever since New York City began formal zoning in 1916, municipalities across America have struggled to balance public health and safety, orderly growth and property rights. In their struggles, they nearly all succumbed to the temptation of Euclidean zoning, a neat yet simple-minded approach to city planning. Euclidean zoning is the segregating of towns into exclusive use districts—typically, one for single-family homes, another for apartments, a third for commercial and the last for industrial. The American standard throughout the 20th century, it remains so today across a wide sash of the country. This geometry gave us pristine neighborhoods, a wrong side of the tracks and far more driving than would result from a less stratified approach to zoning.

I’ve pointed this out before in a post at Seattle’s Land Use Code,

The idea that geographic parts of our city are zoned for use and standards–like single family or NC 85–is the relic of ancient zoning history. Zoning came about to separate use. We need to do the opposite. In a walk down any block in our city we should be able to see many uses and many typologies pushed together and even on the same lot. It’s going to take time to get away from the idea of preventing a “pig in the parlor” to welcoming the whole herd in the house.

The term “pig in the parlor” refers to the landmark Euclid decision that validated the concept of zoning 100 years ago leading to the wide adaptation of Euclidian zoning, a policy that mandates strict separation of use and, now, building typology.

The well intended folks downtown have an amazing ability to misread basic economics. McNellis’ point is that efforts to create walkable neighborhoods end up being read by planners downtown as, “You shall build X square feet of ground floor retail in Y zones.” Why? The planners don’t have any idea. Studies about the economic value created by the ratio? A longitudinal review of 50 years of successful retail square footage in relation to residential? Nope. Just a random decision driven more by the Goldilocks principle than any sound economic review. You’ll excuse the colorful expression, but planners are very good at “making shit up,” whether it’s ratios of this to that, building heights and scale, or the number of housing units we’ll need over the next decade. At the risk of ladling on too man cultural references, it reminds me of Dr. Evil’s poorly thought out and comical requests for ransom; we’ll charge a linkage tax to generate $100 million for housing. Why?

Zoning, generally speaking, is a 20th century solution to a 19th century problem, and it’s far easier for planners to tweak ratios than actually do the hard work of figuring out what makes economic sense. As McNellis points out,

Designing cities to escape the tyranny of the automobile, to allow us to walk from home to work to shopping is a laudable goal, but when that goal is alloyed with a misunderstanding of basic economics and a “We know what’s best” arrogance on the part of cities, buildings no one wants and, worse, no one can use are too often the result.

Ironically, it was Councilmember Mike O’Brien’s vote that killed the idea of allowing commercial space in low-rise zones if it made economic sense, a decision that will likely go down in history as the first big win by NIMBYs living in low-rise neighborhoods in their effort to stop things they don’t like, like microhousing. If commercial retail space makes economic sense then developers should be able to build it and if it doesn’t they shouldn’t have to. When planners downtown take the easy way out, we end up with empty store fronts or areas that could support retail that don’t have it. That’s not only bad planning, but doesn’t support what our city needs, better neighborhoods with diverse uses that meet the needs of people who live and work there.