Local News

Jesse Walker | September 12, 2005

From Fells Point in Baltimore, Maryland: a brewing case study in how zoning laws can subvert a neighborhood's personality.

Comments

|9.12.05 @ 10:09AM|#

Homeowners relish their ability to walk home from pubs after a few drinks, enjoy having restaurants just around the corner and love living in the sort of neighborhood a primetime TV show would use as a backdrop. But they don't want too many more food and beverage joints - particularly ones that feature live music. Businesses thrive from the neighborhood patronage but are exasperated dealing with residents who complain about noise and crowds.

Here's a thought, jackasses--if you don't like crowds and live music, don't move into crowded neighborhoods featuring live-music venues.

Warren|9.12.05 @ 10:21AM|#

Jennifer,
Why shouldn't residents be allowed to have their cake and eat it too. I'm sure an exorbitantly priced city planner could work out the details. Right joe?

|9.12.05 @ 10:24AM|#

I've never heard of an exhorbitantly priced city planner, Warren. Maybe you meant CEO?

Jennifer, it's the flip side of the people who move into the peaceful, bucolic countryside, only to discover that farmers start working early, cow shit smells bad, and the roads aren't paved.

|9.12.05 @ 10:28AM|#

Joe--

Yeah, I'd thought of making a post comparing it to yuppies in Farm Country. Problem is, the nouveau-farm yuppies and people like these Baltimoreans don't just say "Hmm. Turns out my neighborhood isn't what I thought it would be; better sell, and actually research the next neighborhood I move into." No, instead they try to use the power of government to make old, established neighborhoods conform to what THEY want.

Slime.

|9.12.05 @ 10:30AM|#

Jennifer and joe-

You guys are, for now at least, saying things that many people here might agree with. I can only imagine the consternation this is causing some people.

|9.12.05 @ 10:41AM|#

Jennifer, you'd be surprised how many Green Acre yuppies try to civilize the countryside. Noise ordinances, "Health" codes for manure - those people are probably LESS likely to just admit their mistake and move away.

|9.12.05 @ 10:43AM|#

"Here's a thought, jackasses--if you don't like crowds and live music, don't move into crowded neighborhoods featuring live-music venues."

Heh, I knew a guy just like that - Living in Italy, one of the senior officers in on my boat decided to move into an apartment over the most popular bar/club in the city. Then complained we were making too much noise.

|9.12.05 @ 10:44AM|#

Joe--

No, actually, I wouldn't be surprised at all. I know far too many people who believes the world revolves around them and what they want.

|9.12.05 @ 10:47AM|#

Can't they just use eminent domain to kick out all those underperforming businesses and replace them with $700,000 condos?

|9.12.05 @ 11:04AM|#

Probably, but it wouldn't be a very good idea.

|9.12.05 @ 11:06AM|#

Of course it wouldn't be a good idea but it would go a long way towards fulfilling what seems to be the point of this whole exercise: maintaining jacked-up housing values.

|9.12.05 @ 11:29AM|#

Makes sense to me, Rhywun--first you get the government intervention to ensure that poor and middle-class people can't afford to buy a home, which justifies MORE government intervention to build crappy public housing that the middle and lower classes can afford.

|9.12.05 @ 11:32AM|#

Jennifer,

Yup.

Nick, your zoning-obsessed readers still await the article explaining how suburban sprawl zoning contributes to the affordable housing crisis.

And waiting. And waiting.

|9.12.05 @ 11:34AM|#

"living in the sort of neighborhood a primetime TV show would use as a backdrop."

Good winking aside for H:LotS fans.

|9.12.05 @ 12:34PM|#

I can understand the reservation at having a "big box store" open on a residential street, but for the most part they cost of land (Kelo exempt) makes that prohibitive. I like the idea of walking out my front door, and strolling down to the corner grocery. On my way back from work, stop in at a pub, down a few pints, and walk home. Actually, I wish more towns were as incorporated as that one is. Where I live, the town has been zoned to death and you NEED a vehicle to get from your house to a grocery store, bar, retail botique, etc. No car, you are just SOL.

|9.12.05 @ 1:12PM|#

All I can say is amen. Everyone wants these "walkable neigborhoods," but heck, even in places already zoned for bar, the neighbors will fight tooth and nail to keep one from opening. I have a nice little neighborhood bar, and I'd be willing to bet quite a bit that if it didn't already exist, you'd never be able to open one there.

When people get so up in arms about a bar in a neighborhood, I always think, so you *want* people to have to drive drunk?

|9.12.05 @ 1:30PM|#

Commercial life was thought to be dangerous to the morals of women and children. Preserving them from its pernicous influence, including the promiscuous mixing of races and classes, was a driving force behind the suburban zoning that's shaped how we live.

|9.12.05 @ 1:39PM|#

Where I live, the town has been zoned to death and you NEED a vehicle to get from your house to a grocery store, bar, retail botique, etc.

As opposed to walkable cities without zoning, like... Houston?

Zoning or no zoning, the requirements of universal automobile ownership all but prohibit any kind of commercial mixing with residential as cities had once developed throughout history.

|9.12.05 @ 2:39PM|#

Rhywun, I walk 12 minutes to work, and I live in a classic mixed-use neighborhood, which includes not one but two car dealerships, right across from one another. On the main street are small businesses and restaurants, on the side streets are houses and apartments. Three blocks in either direction will take you to houses and apartments on the main street intermingled with the restaruants and small businesses. I can drop my car off and walk to work, then walk back to pick it up in the evening.

Unfortunately, I think a lot of people would think, like you, that such a thing could never happen, so they would forbid it for mixed-use zoning. That's why I'm skeptical of New Urban promises that they'll be able to impose spontaneous order without some nasty side-effects.

I agree with Joe, though, that zoning everything into homogenous groupings has created more problems than it's solved. BTW, a thousand years ago when there were fiscally responsible conservatives, there was a piece in National Review that blamed homelessness in part on rent control. A Reason piece on tract housing zoning would be a good followup.

|9.12.05 @ 2:55PM|#

"Zoning or no zoning, the requirements of universal automobile ownership all but prohibit any kind of commercial mixing with residential as cities had once developed throughout history."

I disagree. Look at neighborhoods from the 1920s.

If we really wanted to, we could keep the cars, but housebreak them.

Larry A|9.12.05 @ 3:08PM|#

Zoning or no zoning, the requirements of universal automobile ownership all but prohibit any kind of commercial mixing with residential as cities had once developed throughout history.

Yeah.

Try to operate a business out of your home, and see whether it's automobiles or zoning regulations that shut you down.

|9.12.05 @ 3:36PM|#

Universal car ownership does pose a problem, though indirectly. In my mixed use neighborhood, one of the biggest impediments to higher density or commercial development is that the second the topic comes up, people start screaming bloody murder about parking.

|9.12.05 @ 3:49PM|#

Sandy/Joe,

I guess my perception is colored by the fact that I don't drive, so your idea of "mixed use" might be unacceptable for me.

dead_elvis,

It's the same complaint raised at any hint of development in Manhattan, too.

|9.12.05 @ 4:32PM|#

Nick, your zoning-obsessed readers still await the article explaining how suburban sprawl zoning contributes to the affordable housing crisis.

Why not write an article? You went to grad school. You should be used to writing about your subject.

I'm not joking: Research it and submit it.

|9.12.05 @ 4:34PM|#

dead elvis,

I'd bet parking is the main issue in this Baltimore story, too. I've been through this in heighborhoods I've lived in, and the biggest complaint always winds up being noisy people coming out of the clubs walking to their cars because the neighborhood has so much free parking on the side streets. Eliminate the free parking and the club goers will have to pay to park, and they'll probably wind up parking in a nearby pay lot or garage and won't be walking thru the residential side streets to get to the free parking.

But the people who bitch the most don't want to bring up the free parking because they still want to park for free themselves, so it winds up being "permit parking" all over the place. (And then the next thing that happens is people rent out their personal spaces and garages for the evening.)

|9.12.05 @ 6:38PM|#

It all comes down to parking in the mixed-use neighborhoods here also.

|9.12.05 @ 6:42PM|#

But the people who bitch the most don't want to bring up the free parking because they still want to park for free themselves,

The parking situation here would be a lot better if homeowners actually used their own driveways, instead of treating it like an extra porch or yard space. At least half the homeowners on my block park on the street, making more of a problem for the renters and guests.

I actually got chased out of a space by a guy who seemed to think the space in front of his house is reserved for him. He had a big jacked up truck and obviously had testosterone issues, so I let him have his way. His driveway is fenced off, he uses it for exercise equipment.

|9.12.05 @ 11:21PM|#

joe-

I don't know if you'd consider this an example of snob zoning, but in Goleta (an incorporated area adjacent to Santa Barbara) there was a big controversy over "granny flats", small apartments usually built atop garages. The Goletans all seemed to want to ban these things, because they didn't want more people moving into the neighborhood.

I opposed this ban for 2 reasons:

1) As a good libertarian I obviously support the inalienable right to build anything you want on your propert, yadda yadda yadda.
2) Although I have no illusion that apartments over garages will magically solve the problem of ever-increasing rents faced by students, when facing a shortage it seems idiotic to ban people from erecting additional housing units. These flats are a win for tenants seeking small, cheap places, and a win for property owners who want to get some rental income.

And before somebody raises the inevitable parking objection, I can assure you that the Goleta neighborhoods in question almost all have garages and driveways, and ample on-street parkkng to boot. Even if every single homeowner built such a flat (not gonna happen), the typical house has enough parking in front for 2 vehicles, and enough garage and driveway to accomodate the homeowner's cars. So a single tenant per house won't cause any significant parking problems.

|9.13.05 @ 11:33AM|#

thoreau,

My complaint isn't that Reason won't discuss one of "my" issues. It's that they won't discuss one of "their" issues - a widespread set of government regulations that both intrude on property rights, and have an enormous impact on the housing market.

My point is not "This dj sux, he won't play Blag Flag." It's that their silence on this issue is deafening.

There are probably any number of reasons your neighbors would oppose in-law apartments, from genuine concerns about parking to a vague sense that "rental units = urban" to fear that the units will really be rented out to multigenerational Mexican families. The effect is the same, however - limiting choice, driving up prices, and cementing the privilege of the two-generation nuclear family model above all other varieties of domestic arrangements.

|9.13.05 @ 3:05PM|#

Hey all. I actually live in the neighborhood in question. Fells Point, Baltimore, MD. You're absolutely right about the parking thing. It's the biggest darn issue out there. But I consider it a phantom issue. Developers have built a ton of parking facilities in the area over the last few years. It still gets difficult to find a spot on the residential streets (like mine), but in my experience the parking spots are locked down by 7PM by residents, not barhoppers. There's plenty of parking for the barhoppers down by the bars. There's plenty of parking on the residential streets too, all day long, right up until folks get home from their white collar jobs.

I don't have anything scientific to back this up, but it seems to me that every ten years or so, a new generation of hipsters thinks it would be soooo cool to live "down in Fells", then they move there, get older, and start bitchin' about "meatheads puking on my hydrangeas". It's a neverending cycle down here.

Also, Baltimore is a city under the thumb of a crooked Democratic Party machine. You thought NOLA was bad?

Also, Fells Point and surrounding area is a nascent Latino neighborhood. That's something that's brand new to Baltimore. It's pretty much always been a Black/White town. Nothing in between. You've got all these people buying houses for half a million or more (and these are 11-12 foot wide rowhouses) and their next door neighbors are 15 immigrant day laborers. These homeowners are trying to make sure that many more people like them move in all around them, and push out the Latinos.