Category: Housing Policy

A vibrant city and neighborhood will have several common aspects. One of those is walkability. And that’s what attracted us to our home at the edge of downtown Eugene.

We were looking for a place where we could build our new, downsized home. On the top of the list were walkability and bike-ability. As we looked around, we found a vacant lot close to downtown. 

What we have found is our new home fits pretty well into the four characteristics that Jane Jacobs, a key voice in shaping urban vitality, posited for vibrant communities.

MULTIPLE FUNCTIONS

One category required for a vibrant neighborhood is one that serves more than two functions at different times of the day. Our house has, within just a couple of blocks, housing, restaurants, retail, automobile service, churches and offices. When I needed tires for our car, I dropped it off at the tire shop that’s four blocks from our house, walked home and waited until it was done. We often walk to dinner, able to choose from several very good restaurants.

SMALL BLOCKS

The block we live on is about 350 feet between streets. It’s in one of the original plats for Eugene, dating to 1907 and laid out on the traditional grid system. This means that services and activities that are just four blocks away are an easy 5 minute walk.

DIVERSE BUILDINGS

The idea here is to have a diverse group of buildings in a neighborhood by age and type in order to have a breadth of incomes. We live on a corner. The four corner lots alone house our single family home, which is a new redevelopment on our lot. Across the street to the west is a two-story apartment building built probably in the 1960s with six small units. To the south is one of the original farmhouses from the early 1900s that is a single family rental. Kitty-corner is also one of the original homes, but one that was larger and has been since converted into three rental apartments.

DENSITY

With the apartments in our immediate neighborhood (including a 13-story apartment two blocks away), the accessory dwelling units, the houses converted to duplex and triplex units, there is enough population in a close-in area to support the restaurants, retail and services mentioned above.

It appears that Jane Jacobs was right. We love our walkable neighborhood.

As time has progressed and civil rights legislation has been enacted, racial, ethnic and economic segregation has become more subtle. Covenants, Codes and Restrictions, commonly referred to as “CCRs”, are deed restrictions placed on lots. They create lots generally of a certain size and price. They require minimum house size (often 2,000 sq ft or more). They specifically restrict the lot’s use to one single family dwelling and many times, they require owner occupancy, prohibiting renters. 

Planned Unit Developments (PUDs) are another way developers use to achieve the same ends. An entire area is designed for a look and feel. Many times, homes in PUDs are similar size, design and even color. Often in the suburbs or at the edges of our communities, and generally large enough to create at least a small neighborhood, PUDs further foster that “sameness” and discourage diversity.

The general thinking is to use multi-family housing as a “buffer” between more intense uses (commercial) and less intense uses (single family). Neighborhood Groups fight adamantly about keeping the single family “character” of their areas intact.

These create at best a homogenous neighborhood of similar economic class and at worst segregates the wealthier from the economically poorer residents. Socially, monoculture is, in my opinion (and in the opinions of many others much smarter than me) unhealthy. When we only hang out with people who look like us, think like us and have similar economic means, not only do we miss out on a variety of cultural exposure, society will decay and divide.

(next: the advantages of mixed use neighborhoods)

Zoning laws and regulations were first instituted in the US in the late 19th century. We were pretty much a rural society at that time, but when urbanization really took off, and immigration also was high, the population of our neighborhoods became much more diverse. Sadly, in my opinion, zoning laws initially began by directly banning people based on race and ethnicity.

Yes, zoning actually began as racism. 

In the early 1900s, many cities passed lot restrictions requiring a minimum construction cost and even prohibited the sale of homes to blacks. Communities like Los Angeles, for example, enacted the nation’s first municipal zoning ordinance in 1908, which prohibited in residential areas “nuisance” uses such as laundries, which were largely owned at the time by immigrants.

In 1926, the US Supreme Court upheld what has come to be THE landmark case for zoning by communities: Euclid v Ambler. Euclid, Ohio’s authority to regulate uses on particular lots and separate specific uses was upheld and stands to this day. And it even seems, on its surface, to make good sense.

This idea then spread to many municipalities and spawned the Euclidean zoning we have today. Basically, it allowed suburban homes, away from the commerce, which, coupled with the advent of the automobile, essentially created more homogenous neighborhoods. And this, in turn, actually furthered racial, ethnic and economic segregation.

I encourage you to study this more; what I’m saying here is a very cursory overview and simplification of our history. There is way too much to put into this short article. 

(next time: some examples of current zoning methods)

We are announcing an additional focus of thesimpleHOUSE. There has been much talk lately about housing (costs, shortages, “missing middle” and more). We are facing a need to change our historic views of housing.

We will be diving into this topic starting with a little history of how we got to where we are and where we can go from here. Our first article will be posted soon.