Exclusionary zoning? Inclusionary zoning? How about no zoning?
Sometimes the easiest solution is the best solution …
When I cruise back and forth between Wisconsin and South Carolina, which happens often, one of my favorite spots along the way is a stretch of Indiana highway, where a farmer has planted a series of signs to educate passersby. My favorite sign is: Zoning isn’t the solution; zoning is the problem.
Don’t argue with farmers. They know of what they speak. There’s two kinds of zoning, exclusionary and inclusionary, and they both are bad. Exclusionary zoning mostly occurs when rich white liberals try to erect regulatory gates to their neighborhoods, otherwise known as zoning districts, to keep the riffraff out, and do so in the name of environmental protection (as in, we need minimum sized large lot restrictions because smaller lots lead to more building and impervious surfaces, which is false, btw). The end result is higher development costs and a decline in affordability. Hooray for NIMBYs!