Sarah Booth: Zoning for Sustainability

Sustainable City Network:

In a study of 32 cities of various sizes, University of Wisconsin Professor Anna Haines found that most city zoning ordinances had little support for sustainable development. Large or small, coastal or central, most of the communities studied by Haines and her colleague Edward Jepson didn’t have much in their regulations that was useful for supporting sustainability principles. This isn’t surprising, since most of the ordinances were written long before sustainability became a household word.

“The city that I live in wrote their code in 1979,” Haines said, so it’s not very surprising that it doesn’t address sprawl, peak oil, floodwater control or other contemporary concerns.
“Almost 100 years ago is when the first zoning codes were put in place — New York City was the first,” she said. “And at that time the purpose was to strictly separate uses, to separate industry from housing, which made a lot of sense at the time, but doesn’t so much anymore.”

Haines’ study began by identifying nine principles of sustainability:
1. Encourage higher-density development.
2. Encourage mixed use.
3. Encourage local food production.
4. Protect ecosystems and natural functions.
5. Encourage transportation alternatives.
6. Preserve/create a sense of place.
7. Increase housing diversity and affordability.
8. Reduce the use of fossil fuels/encourage the use of fossil fuel alternatives.
9. Encourage the use of industrial by-products.

There has been a big lag in revising zoning ordinances for sustainability and walkability.

What Does a Sustainable Future Actually Look Like?

Todd Reubold, writing for Ensia:

Ask a hundred people if they’re interested in living in a “more sustainable world” and I bet the vast majority would respond, “Yes.” The trouble is, they’d probably all have a different idea in their heads of what that meant. We need to start talking about a sustainable future in specifics. Sustainability over what time frame? Where? For whom?

Sustainability is a goal -- a thing to continue to strive for, and as such it is a journey. Are we willing to live with the needs of future generations in mind or not? Should we save North Dakota oil for future generations and use less oil today? Today we are trying to pump it out as fast as we can (at the expense of wasting natural gas). Or should we be oblivious and uncaring for those that have yet to be? It would appear that we almost always say that it is up to future generations to live with the benefits, overexploitation, and pollution that they inherit. 

Sustainable Living?

It is best to live in a community and to be part of a civil society. A place where people care about the well-being of others. Other ways of life seem uncivil or harsh, regardless of their sustainability: