The very nature of zoning makes it a magnet for controversy and divisiveness. The latest example has erupted in College Station, where some homeowners want more restrictive land-use regulations to combat gentrification and the growth of student housing. But other homeowners don’t want the restrictions. The dispute is pitting neighbor against neighbor.
This is an inevitable consequence of zoning.
Zoning is a coercive government tool to regulate and control land use. Many find this acceptable when zoning doesn’t conflict with their desires. But many don’t like being told that they can’t use their property for student housing. Nor do they like being prohibited from tearing down an old bungalow to build a modern home. They want to use their property as they judge best.
As the conflict in College Station demonstrates, those who don’t like the decisions others make often turn to government to prohibit acting on the undesirable choices. And locally, zoning is the most common weapon they have to beat the recalcitrant into submission. If you don’t like someone’s tastes in architecture or their desired land use, all you need to do is round up a group of like-minded people, raise a ruckus, and put pressure on zoning officials. As one College Station homeowner put it,
You can decide all of a sudden you have a group of people and all you need is 50 percent plus one. That’s it and they can rezone and add restrictions to your private property.
The homeowner is correct. Zoning allows the majority to impose their values and desires on every other property owner. But rights, including property rights, protect us from the passions of mobs. Rights protect our freedom to act as we choose, no matter who or how many may disagree (of course, we must respect the freedom of others to do the same). Rights protect our freedom to pursue our own individual flourishing.
Zoning is a complete denial of property rights. The premise underlying zoning is that the individual must sacrifice his flourishing for the alleged well-being of the community. Those who don’t do so “voluntarily” are compelled to do so under threat of fines or jail.
Zoning is supposedly the means by which the “community vision” is implemented. But there is no such thing as a “community vision.” There are only individual visions–what each individual aspires to for his own life. Zoning allows some to impose their vision on the entire community. And that will not unite a community. It will, as the current situation in College Station illustrates, divide a community.