(This week’s civic education and engagement column from Danville’s The Republican newspaper.)
If you’ve motored west on I-74 by Crawfordsville in recent years, you may have seen the billboard. It claimed zoning doesn’t prevent problems, but only creates them.
Billboard company owners have a vested interest in disliking zoning. They want to erect more billboards, and they want to place them – well, anywhere they’d like. Like in your next-door-neighbor’s front yard. Zoning laws and other regulations stand in their way. Those laws say yes, billboards are allowed in our community, but only in these areas along major roads and by the Interstate exit. They prescribe how many can be erected in a specific amount of space, so your town doesn’t start to resemble a Tennessee tourist trap.
Zoning is a subject that draws scorn and even anger from folks who are typically polite. After listening to what seems like hundreds of anti-zoning comments, I slowly came to realize the problem wasn’t rooted in zoning.
The real problem is ignorance – as in the absence of knowledge. Aside from elected officials and the professionals who regularly interact with those officials, few people understand the reasons for zoning and how it is structured. Humans don’t like things we don’t understand, so we assume the worst. Like assuming zoning is just those power-hungry idiots on the town council pressing their thumbs on the poor property owners who voted for them.
The real reason zoning exists is to protect you and your investment in your property. It makes sure nobody can build a gas station or a supermarket in your next-door neighbor’s yard. Zoning also protects parks, streams, and other features that contribute to our quality of life. It allows towns to envision a future and put the pieces in place to make that vision a reality. It encourages the types of development local leaders see as positive and prevents projects that might negatively affect the community.
Not convinced? Hop into your car and drive to downtown Indianapolis on Washington Street. Once you’ve passed under I-465, pay attention to the jumble of building types and uses on both sides. That’s what happens when your community lacks real zoning. Then drive along West 38th Street near the remnants of Lafayette Square and look for logical connections between neighboring businesses – including linked driveways and lots. You won’t see many, and that’s what happens when your zoning ordinances are weak or ineffective.
So who makes the rules for zoning? The process usually begins with the collaborative development of what’s known as a Comprehensive Plan, which identifies how the community should look in the future. We’ll concentrate new housing over here, plan some retail for this intersection that should be busier in a decade, and designate this wetland for a future park. Most communities hunger for public participation in making those decisions, but despite extensive publicity, people can’t be bothered to spend an hour or so considering and responding to recommendations.
Of course, their lack of eagerness to play a role in shaping the Comprehensive Plan and the adjustments to the zoning map it requires doesn’t interfere one bit with their ability to complain about them after the fact.