Why zoning does more harm than good

"Thomas Kuhn was a philosopher whose groundbreaking 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, is credited with bringing the term paradigm shift to pop culture. Kuhn described how scientific communities stick to established paradigms, even as evidence of their limitations mounted. Widely accepted paradigms for understanding and interpreting knowledge don't crumble under the weight of mere data. Instead, they tend to persist until a crisis emerges-when anomalies become so disruptive that a shift to a new paradigm is unavoidable."

"The wealthy had options, so they'd put some distance between themselves and factory life. You can imagine that the elite would want to guarantee never having to deal with the industrial riffraff. Zoning would give such guarantees. You can also imagine that social workers and other empaths would want to guarantee the poor and middle class had the same separation from the dirty parts of a city as the elites had. Zoning would give such guarantees."

"But zoning wasn't used merely as a tool to separate heavy industry from residential zones. Local power brokers segregated all the land uses-separating single-family homes from apartments, office buildings from retail, residential from retail, and so on. The regulatory framework became so normalized in America that it's hard for people to imagine life without it: "Without zoning, my neighbor might build a strip club and a paper mill.""

Scientific communities often adhere to established paradigms even when evidence reveals their limitations, and paradigms typically persist until accumulating anomalies trigger a crisis that forces a shift. Zoning originated in the early 20th century to protect homeowners from nearby industrial harms by separating heavy industry from residential areas. Zoning also served elite and reformist interests by guaranteeing spatial distance from industrial blight for wealthier and middle-class residents. Over time zoning expanded to segregate land uses—single-family homes from apartments, offices from retail—becoming deeply normalized. The regulatory framework reduced imaginaries of mixed-use urban life and created entrenched resistance to change.

Read at Fast Company