Zoning Out

(Editor's note: Anthony Flint, who wrote the Perspectives column in yesterday's Sunday Magazine advocating the abolition of zoning rules in Massachusetts, directs education programs on sustainable growth for the state Office for Commonwealth Development. His employment by a government agency involved with those issues should have been disclosed in the author's note with the column.)

I'm sure I'd be arrested or ignored or maybe punched in the face, but lately I've had the urge to sidle up to people filling their tanks with $3.29-per-gallon gasoline and whisper: "You know, a lot of this problem could be solved if we just changed zoning."

That's right. Those rules for what gets built and where - spelled out on color-coded maps hanging in most every town hall. Soaring gas prices have made a lot of us yearn to drive less, walk more, and work near home. OK, you say. Let's start arranging ourselves differently - let's build neighborhoods where we don't have to jump in the car for every errand. But zoning rules in Massachusetts and across the country forbid proximity. Most municipalities strictly prohibit what planners call "mixed-use" development: homes jumbled together with shops and restaurants and offices. In other words, the traditional New England town center, or Roslindale Square, or Back Bay.

What we need is to abolish zoning as we know it. Start over. Short of that, we should change the most outdated provisions that stand in the way of compact, concentrated development.

These provisions once made sense. At the beginning of the last century, cities were unhealthy, crowded places. Progressive reformers responded with stricter rules for building and zoning that separated the then-messy functions of life. Homes needed to be in one zone, slaughterhouses and tanneries in another, pubs and stores in yet another. The US Supreme Court blessed this approach in 1926; in the suburban boom following World War II, the space between these diverse functions grew. Indeed, zoning virtually guaranteed dispersal. But 80 years after being upheld, zoning has become outmoded.

Responding to consumer demand, several local communities have started to target cumbersome provisions. Boston is getting rid of rules that senselessly require all developers to provide two or more parking spaces per new home - even if the development is right on top of a T station. Carver lifted restrictions on so-called in-law apartments, which required ripping out the kitchen if a relative moved out. Framingham ditched a ban on housing over downtown shops. Medford cleared the way for condominiums, shops, and offices near the Wellington Circle T stop. And Somerville is ready to rewrite rules so similar development can rise on land zoned for factories that have long since closed. Where the old rules persist, only the wealthiest - and most patient - developers can persevere through the time-consuming process of getting special permits and variances.

More rejiggering of old rules is needed, and residents will have to pitch in. At town meetings, voters shouldn't torpedo a zoning change just because it's different, and neighbors of potential high-density development, if it's well designed, shouldn't respond with a knee-jerk "Not here." Good development can be a great thing for communities in need of housing.

Because of Massachusetts's statutory complexities and four centuries of settlement, I'll confess it would be difficult to remake our zoning rules from scratch. But elsewhere in the country, local governments are testing out SmartCode, a new kind of zoning that relies on six grades of density - from urban to rural - and bases rules on the design, appearance, and mass of buildings rather than what goes on inside them. It's the brainchild of the New Urbanists, planners and architects who promote compact, walkable communities and who are scheduled to wrap up their four-day annual conference in Providence today. Their radical notion is that the rules of development should change with the times.

Just as reformers at the turn of the century saw intolerable conditions and pushed a new paradigm, consumers spending $70 a week on gas are going to start looking for alternatives to dispersed living. They're going to be mighty annoyed when they discover that the common-sense solution is against the law.

Anthony Flint, a Boston writer and former Globe reporter, is the author of the 2006 book This Land: The Battle Over Sprawl and the Future of America. Send e-mail to magazine@globe.com.