Notre Dame Helmet Cam

I grew up in the Midwest, in a former settler's town founded in the early 19th Century.  Plots were sold in a town center four blocks square.  Land parcels were set aside for schools, libraries, and public structures.  The village green, where the original center of town was located, is a protected landmark in the city.  Good leadership and good teachers made my community what it is today.  Zoning was a part of my community's heritage from the beginning, and it helps keep our way of life alive.

Toledo's residential areas are not growing.  The city is an industrial center and a highway junction.  Big business and the University will drive whatever further expansion the city undergoes.  Nobody will build gorgeous four-bedroom houses with big front porches in a de-zoned Toledo because nobody will take out a mortgage with all the low-cost housing available in the city.  De-zoning the city will not cause a decrease in commuting, either.  Everybody owns a car or knows somebody who owns a car, and public transportation is minimal at best.  The city is spread out a lot; not on the level of a Detroit, but enough that owning a car is simply a fact of life and makes the most sense for the average citizen.  The trouble with Detroit and Baltimore is that they were inexpertly constructed in the first place.  Baltimore is a medieval-style city.  Detroit is spread out over a hundred square miles of land that the city stupidly expanded into during its salad days.  That growth was unsustainable, and the very real consequences we face now are largely due to the corruption of city leaders then and now, the poor state of the schools, the growth of suburbia, and all the other ailments of post-WW2 American cities.

I don't feel that the comparison to Asian and European cities holds much water, because the cities there were subjected to invasion and other disasters that we do not need to take into account in American urban planning.  They also did not have the luxury of being built in an era where, on paper at least, the will of the people and the rule of law governed the direction of the nation.  Napoleon didn't like the people barricading Paris's narrow, medieval streets, so he razed hundreds of buildings and created the wide, open boulevards we know today.  London is a pokey medieval maze, and always has been.  I know, I've been there.

My point is, the great Western expansion from the original 13 colonies was a great test of our abilities and know-how as a nation.  Our collective forbears settled on a highly-organized system of selling plots of land 200 years ago in the community where I grew up, and I and my family continue to reap the rewards today.  The zoning system works well for my area, and I say stick with it.  Replacing zoning and our current system of property management with a new system would risk much, and you'll forgive me for feeling a little squeamish if the test case would be the whole of the United States of America.