She is a “Mexican-American architect, attorney, professor and policymaker whose interdisciplinary work focuses on how law and policy can foster more equitable, sustainable, well-designed and connected places.” The author grew up in Houston, served for seven years as the head of Hartford, Conn.’s planning and zoning commission (her ex-husband was mayor), and now lives in Georgetown in Washington, D.C., “arguably the best neighborhood in the United States.”
Given her impeccable establishment credentials (Rhodes Scholar, law degree from Yale, professorship at Cornell) and “progressive” deployment of capitalizations, pronouns and phrases, Bronin’s perspective on land-use controls is hardly surprising. In her weltanschauung, “the discouraging ways zoning gets things wrong” can end. In their place? A “zoning for good” that will produce “more vibrant economies,” “greater household security” and “more delightful experiences.”
“Key to the City” is not a probe of “how zoning shapes our world,” but Bronin’s playbook for how New Urbanists should engineer socioeconomic and environmental outcomes.
But before we assess the bad stuff, patches of common ground deserve attention. Supporters of limited government and market-oriented public policies as the wisest tools to foster thriving urban communities have several agreements with Bronin.
Parking mandates are one example. San Diego, San Francisco, Nashville and Chicago are among the cities that have rolled back or eliminated the dictates. (California YIMBY’s M. Nolan Gray: “The decision of how much parking needs to be built is best left with developers and prospective homebuyers rather than imposed by regulators.”)
But holdouts remain, and even small towns are slow to loosen the reins. Sandpoint, Idaho, required a bank planning an expansion “to build 118 more parking spaces to satisfy the town’s zoning code, which required a parking space for every few hundred square feet. … To meet this obligation, the bank purchased adjacent properties, demolished historic buildings, and evicted numerous small businesses,” she wrote.
“This is no anomalous case,” Bronin added. “All over the country, parking requirements … have resulted in the teardown of historic buildings. Sandpoint not only saw beloved buildings and businesses destroyed but also its municipal coffers depleted, because property owners pay far less in property taxes for parking lots than for buildings.”
Minimum lot-size requirements offer another avenue for peaceful coexistence. Like many on the right, Bronin favors zoning-code changes that give homeowners “the option either to subdivide and build more housing, or preserve the land for those people who demand an acre and are willing to pay for it.” She writes approvingly of Minneapolis’s 2019 reforms, which permitted “triplexes – three units, housing a total of three families – across all single-family districts, and fourplexes in some residential districts.”
“Key to the City’s” best passage recounts the transformation of Baltimore’s Remington neighborhood. In the 19th century, it was a manufacturing powerhouse. But Remington’s boom fizzled, and by the 1930s its “quarries and mills … were working half-time, if at all.” Charm City’s land-use bureaucrats were slow to adapt. Baltimore’s “frozen zoning code” failed to acknowledge “the reality that heavy industry would not be returning.”
It wasn’t until 2016 that a rewrite “assigned about 10 blocks in Remington to the industrial mixed-use zone, which legalizes a healthy mix … including light industrial uses that have little noise, odor, or vibration effects outside of the building where they transpire.” Now, “food processing facilities” are allowed, as well as breweries and bakeries, “multifamily and live-work housing, schools, shops, art galleries, restaurants, banks, health clinics, offices and even agriculture.”
She’s all for flexibility – as long as it’s in the service of the lifestyles, commerce and eco-habits she prefers. And that’s why “Key to the City” is so disappointing. A smart-growther and climate catastrophist to the core, Bronin detests “sprawl” and “a reliance on cars via an infrastructure that forces us to use them.” Self-awareness is not her forte.
Living in Bronin’s beloved, high-density Georgetown wouldn’t bring much joy to most Americans: “I can walk from my house to three different places serving up chocolate croissants, or to get a haircut or a pair of shoes, while window-shopping for furniture and kitchen cabinetry.”
Last year, a Pew Research Center survey found that respondents prefer suburbs where “houses are larger and farther apart, but schools, stores and restaurants are several miles away” to neighborhoods where “houses are smaller and closer to each other, but schools, stores and restaurants are within walking distance.”
“Key to the City” tumbles to its nadir when it describes “one of the only self-contained communities in America to ban personal cars”: Walt Disney World. The park’s “enduring popularity suggests that people might actually be willing to use, and might even enjoy using, modes of transportation beyond the car.”
Really? A monorail for Costco runs? A “Minnie Van” to haul lumber and cement for your contracting business? A gondola for ferrying the cul-de-sac’s kids to and from soccer practice? The mobility options for families on vacation at a mega-resort aren’t remotely comparable to the everyday transportation needs of 335 million Americans.
Bronin’s exploration of zoning’s rigid – and yes, at times, racist – past contains several cogent critiques. But her advocacy for land-use regulation that manifests leftists’ vision of places “that are vibrant and fulfilling,” where people “find maximum enjoyment and opportunity,” is tone deaf and disturbingly grandiose.
“Key to the City” could have made an important contribution to the debate over zoning reform. Instead, by embracing the same old command-and-control we’ve come to expect from New Urbanists, the book will be quickly forgotten.
D. Dowd Muska is a researcher and writer who studies public policy from the limited-government perspective. A veteran of several think tanks, he writes a column and publishes other content at No Dowd About It
