Always, times are changing. Technology, culture, and society are all evolving at an incredible rate. Not everything, however, evolves at this rapid pace. Political lag is the term for the time elapsed between circumstances changing that warrant political action and that action actually being taken. Political lag is the underlying issue that creates political problems for organizations all over the country, like my service group the North Limestone Community Development Center.
Overview of North Limestone
NoLi, the North Limestone Community Development Center, is a non-profit organization that seeks to improve the social and economic environment in the North Limestone corridor (NoLi CDC, 2014). One of their largest projects is affordable, mixed use housing. NoLi believes that by making affordable housing available, they can stabilize neighborhoods. Mixed use development is an area or building that is used for a combination of residential, commercial, and cultural uses (MRSC. 2014). NoLi believes that by making their housing mixed use, they can encourage economic growth and lower the barrier to entry for young, low income entrepreneurs.
History and Advantages of Mixed Use Development
All development used to be mixed use. Before anybody thought of zoning laws, people used to produce and sell out of their own homes. A farmer lived in a farmhouse, a baker lived in a bakery. The image below shows a historic example of mixed use development.
Building and owning a separate building, just for you to work in, is incredibly expensive and creates the need for commuting. Having people work and sell out of their own houses makes cities more compact and pedestrian friendly. By having businesses and homes in the same area, you create a more compact and more bicycle friendly neighborhood. By making it easier to get places without a car, you reduce the need for cars and other expensive and unsustainable forms of transportation.
The compact city is an idea that could solve many of our modern problems. In their study on walkability and health Garrick, Marshall, and Piatkowski found that regardless of other factors, more compact and connected cities were correlated with lower rates of health problems (2014.).
We control for the food environment, land uses, commuting time, socioeconomic status, and street design. The results suggest that more compact and connected street networks with fewer lanes on the major roads are correlated with reduced rates of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease among residents.
Mixed use development maximizes economic output for a given area and creates tight knit, interdependent communities. Interdependence can increase social solidarity and help make people feel like they’re a part of a community. It does not, however, work very well with modern commercial building codes, like minimum parking space requirements which expand the footprints of businesses and increase costs. These more car friendly codes essentially eliminate many of the advantages mixed use development has over single use.
Problems with Mixed Use
Mixed use development is not without its drawbacks. Single use zoning solved a lot of the problems caused by the incompatibility of mixed use zoning and the lifestyle and economy of the early 1900’s. Single use zoning made cities in the early 1900’s more stable. The interdependence of mixed use zoning is a double edged sword. For a development to be successful, many parts all have to be working together. If the bakery goes out of business and you don’t have another option nearby, then you get a bread shortage. This is partly why investors see mixed use development as risky business. They don’t want an entire development to be jeopardized by the failure of a few parts. Construction costs in mixed use development can also exceed those for single use. Commercial building codes are much stricter on things like fire separations, sound attenuation, and ventilation. This increases building cost, although not more than building an entirely separate well ventilated, sound attenuated, fire separated building.
Pollution can be and historically has been a problem for mixed use development. Industry can create environmental pollution, like air and water pollution, that can be harmful to residents in close proximity. Commercial development can create noise pollution and solid waste that can adversely affect those who live nearby. Commercial and industrial use can overload infrastructure. Commercial buildings draw more electrical current, more water, and more natural gas than residential buildings do. Converting a neighborhood to mixed use might require a pricy infrastructure upgrade that local governments may be unwilling or unable to afford. Mixed use zoning brings a lot of new people to an area, something that some residents fearing for the safety of their families might be cautious about.
How we got where we are today
Single use zoning laws, also called Euclidian zoning, originated in the 1860’s in Brooklyn with a law that prohibited all commercial activity on a specific parkway. Single use zoning, historically speaking, is a relatively new and highly controversial idea. Its controversy is exemplified by cases like Village of Euclid, Ohio v. Ambler Realty Co. (OYEZ, 2011.) The Supreme Court case was a landmark case that set off an explosion of local zoning codes. Spurred on by the decision, small cities tried to plan out where people could live, work, and produce. The structure of a city became far more pre planned and far less organic. Zoning codes served a purpose. They separated the clean places where people lived from the polluted places where they worked. Residential environments were very unstable about 100 years ago. People moved to wherever was within commuting distance of where they worked. New people were hired and fired all the time because giant factories demanded a huge workforce. Having everybody live in these factories would have been disastrous for public health and infrastructure.
Today the situation is different. Neighborhood stability is a priority. Our economy is far less industrialized and most people now work in the service industry. As of 2010, 86% of workers work in the service sector of the economy (Ritholtz, 2012.). What NoLi is trying to do in no way resembles a megafactory dumping industrial waste into the environment with people living their lives in those polluted conditions. NoLi just wants people to be able to work and produce out of a place that they own and can live in. The picture above shows an example of the affordable housing NoLi is building.
It’s not the 1900’s anymore. We live in a different paradigm, one that in many ways resembles the Korean village in Nam Young Chung’s photograph. The compact city is far more compatible with our modern lifestyle than the sprawled out industrialized 1930’s vision of a city.
We are falling into a progress trap. Single use zoning solved problems from the early 1900’s, but with rent and transportation becoming more and more expensive it’s time to reevaluate. A lot of modern cities are already taking a second look at zoning codes. According to the Department for Communities and Local Government, “The vast majority (87%) of authorities consider mixed-use development to be an important area of policy” (2006. page 21) Many modern cities are planning their laws and codes to make them more pedestrian friendly.
Conclusion
Political lag is a systemic issue that causes problems for all of us. NoLi is trying to take an innovative approach to community development, and a 1930’s view of what a city should be is getting in the way. Those zoning codes used to make sense, but times have changed. Economic productivity is no longer so heavily tied to highly polluting industry that harms the health of local residents, it’s service based. By trying to safeguard the health of the community with century old tactics, we may actually be increasing the rates for many health problems. The issue of zoning isn’t as cut and dry as mixed versus single use to be sure, but it’s time to take another look at our zoning laws.
Political lag is a sweeping issue, it’s not just zoning. From copyright law to environmental regulations, technology and culture have developed far faster than our political system can account for. In order to solve these problems we need to be aware of political lag and we need to actively try to alleviate it. Write your representatives and try to raise awareness, both of the specific issues like zoning, and the underlying issue - political lag.
References
Chung, N.Y. “Korean farm village I,” Center for Korean Studies Digital Archive, accessed October 15, 2014, http://cksdigital.manoa.hawaii.edu/photo/ite
Department for Communities and Local Government. (2006). Mixed use development, practice and potential. http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20120919132719/http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/planningandbuilding/pdf/156291.pdf
Garrick, N.W., Marshall, W.E., & Piatkowski, D.P. (2014). Community design, street networks, and public health. Journal of Transport & Health
MRSC. (2014). Mixed Use Development in Plain English. Retrieved October 15, 2014 from http://www.mrsc.org/subjects/planning/lu/
NoLi CDC. (2014). Who We Are. Retrieved October 20, 2014 from http://nolicdc.com/about
OYEZ, (2011). EUCLID v. AMBLER REALTY CO.. The Oyez Project at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. Retrieved October 20, 2014 from http://www.oyez.org/cases/
1901-1939/1925/1925_31
Ritholtz, B. (2012). The Shift from Manufacturing to Service Economy. Retrieved October 20, 2014 from http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/01/the-shift-from-manufacturing-to-service-economy/