Design Freedom vs Zoning

Fall 2015

Zoning, We Hardly Know Thee

As the Progressive Era began, any schoolboy knew that Adam Smith and fellow classical economists defined the "free market" as:

"a more productive industrial capitalism freed of tribute to privileged classes."

Guess what? The privileged (old and new) have little trouble skipping economic history and standing on its head that meaning of "free market" to mean the reverse:

"unearned income and captive pricing freed from government regulation."

Thus, the first and essential thing to know about zoning is that, as a product of the Progressive Era, zoning is grossly susceptible to reversal of meanings, i.e. revisionist history. The second thing to know is that the Progressives were also imperfect products of their era, i.e. human.

What follows is a placeholder for the much more extensive paper de-stereotyping Seattle's initial 1923 zoning, which designated existing "mansions" and almost all undeveloped land (lots of it back then) as Resident 1 (Single Family) then designated working class homes as Resident 2 (Multiple, i.e. MF) (lots of it back then). Optimism, following a post WW1 recession, zoned Seattle in 1923 for the homes and businesses of one million people. Many years passed before demand for in-city SF zoned homes began to exceed supply, but when it did, those thrifty-by-necessity bought in-city MF zoned homes at "use value." Of course, this no longer works today.

Pre-zoning, most of Seattle's working-class plats were at 25' lot frontage intervals. Seattle's initial zoning set a minimum of 40' lot frontage intervals. Later (1950s) amendments revised that to 50' frontage to accommodate a driveway for on-site parking. The initial zoning ordinance, part of a wave sweeping the country—Seattle's purchased at a bargain basement price—was simplicity itself, eminently accessible to all persons of normal intellect. 92 years later: "law sufficiently complex is the same as no law at all."

Below please (eventually) find a bulk study showing one configuration of the 2010 Design-Freedom MF Code maximization of a 50' wide 5000 sf lot (once, the minimum lot size for an affordable market-rate tract house). Minimums tend to become maximums, but in addition today law sufficiently complex can be readily mined for loopholes that elected officials willingly, or as useful idiots enable.