- October 31, 2024
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Look at the view on Tamiami Trail looking south in the photo. With few exceptions, that’s everything. The same standardized, gigantic concrete oversized columbarians — with external touches here and there. Architects try to design those features to create something consumers will buy, and, equally important, that the neighborhood NIMBYs and central planning commissars will approve.
This look is everywhere. And you know what? It’s contrary to what used to be the American way. Americans used to embrace creativity and, dare we use this disgustingly overused word — “diversity.”
Look at the variety and creativity in the way people dress — all kinds of kinds and styles. Look at the variety in automobile brands and styles. The variety in foods and restaurant cuisine. Look at the different designs of single-family homes, inside and out. On one block, you can have a midcentury Frank Lloyd Wright gem next to a Mediterranean Revival palace, each painted different colors.
But no matter what in Florida, when anyone proposes to construct a multistory building, the NIMBYs come out from under the rugs, and the planning commissioners pull out their 2,000-page zoning codes.
“We can’t have that!” the chorus goes. “It will destroy the ambience of our beloved street.”
Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But here is the truth:
Zoning is anti-property rights. Zoning is discriminatory. Zoning has made housing unaffordable. Zoning has made so much of our landscape ugly. And, well, for the most part, zoning has created a disaster in America.
Zoning is why you see so many high-rise condos in Sarasota and Florida look like their designs all came from the same boring guy.
What’s more, here is the irony: For more than 100 years, Sarasota prided itself on being a haven for artists and the arts — the essence of creativity. Sarasota has one of the most amazing art museums in the world (the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art). And Sarasota is the birthplace of a world-famous style of architecture: the Sarasota School of Architecture.
And yet, time after time after time, NIMBYs, planning commissioners and bureaucrats exert great efforts to squelch anything that falls a centimeter outside of the lines of the code (e.g. Obsidian/1260 N. Palm Avenue Residences).
Rather than squish and snuff creativity, consider embracing it and entrepreneurial capitalism. Look at all the amazing, life-improving innovations that individuals have produced because of their creativity and ownership of private property.
The results have been far, far superior to what you’ll ever get out of that 2,000-page zoning code.
The following are excerpts from “The zoning theory of everything,” by Christian Britschgi, a reporter for Reason magazine: