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Two cities just across the street from each other.
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What seems like the same neighborhood appears to be a different part of different worlds.
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One jurisdiction is thriving, clean streets, active businesses, while the other is filled with boarded up windows, illegal dumping, and vacant lots.
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What changed?
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How do growing cities thrive and what can be done about our dying cities?
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Stay tuned to learn all about the life and death of cities and the critical role planning, zoning, and code enforcement play in shaping the future of our communities.
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From Civic A Law, this is TrueCode, a podcast explaining what code enforcement is, why our communities need it, and why you should care.
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From firsthand experiences, we discuss quality of life issues to reveal the truth about code enforcement.
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Adam is the community development director for Coastal City here in California, also a planner.
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And with a long history in planning and hailing originally from uh Louisiana, Adam comes with a varied uh level of world experience uh talking about zoning and planning and history.
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And we're gonna dive into what makes a good city good and what makes a bad city bad, and why do we even have them in the first place?
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So, Adam, glad to have you here.
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Welcome to the show.
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Thanks, Matt.
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It's my pleasure to be here.
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I appreciate the opportunity.
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Absolutely.
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Uh so Adam, we always ask our guests, how the heck did you get into code enforcement in the first place?
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It's a relatively circuitous story.
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It started out in my early 20s.
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I worked in construction, real estate development, project management, those kinds of things in the private sector.
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And I was fortunate enough to be in my middle to late 20s when the Great Recession hit.
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So I wasn't far enough along in my career to survive that type of economic hit.
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And I wasn't young enough to be able to live with my parents a few years longer.
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So forced me to make some hard decisions.
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And one of those decisions was to go back to school.
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So I went back to UCSD and finished up a degree that I started in political science, transferred over to urban studies and planning, and then from there went to San Diego State University and got a master's in public administration.
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My goal was to get into the private sector to help develop affordable housing.
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That was really what I wanted to do.
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And in my UCSD career, I needed to have an internship.
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So this kind of plays into uh what we're going to be discussing here today.
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I wanted to get involved in plans, specifically building plans, project development, that kind of thing.
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You have plans to get into plans.
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Get into plans, yeah.
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There was a part of me that, you know, also had interest in becoming an architect, something like that.
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So as I was going through to finish up my degree, I started sending out applications to local governments, and I saw that they had planning divisions.
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And I said, Well, the planning division, they must be dealing with plans.
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I really had no idea what zoning actually was at the local level.
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And so I showed up in San Clemente.
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They're the only city that returned my inquiries.
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And within three weeks, it absolutely blew my mind that this was something that humans as an organization provided at a municipal level.
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Meaning, what is this?
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Meaning what?
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Actually planning and zoning and that somebody is somebody other than private developers are thinking about the future growth of cities.
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It blew my mind.
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So I started working in the planning division as an unpaid intern.
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I just saw that unbelievable opportunities of continuing in that line.
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And so I essentially just hung out until the Great Recession subsided enough that they uh hired me as an assistant planner part-time.
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I was still finishing up my master's degree at that time.
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And so once that was completed, I took a full-time position as an associate planner.
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How that all got into code compliance was I'd quickly established myself as somebody that can take on projects and handle them quickly and efficiently.
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And particularly probably complicated ones or ones that nobody else really wants to or knows how to deal with.
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Right.
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Which is like the definition of code enforcement.
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100%.
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And so a lot of those projects that I took on were specifically related to addressing community concerns.
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So I had a
Load full transcript
project where I updated the city's massage establishment ordinance.
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We had lost a hospital.
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And so one of my projects was to rezone that area in such a way that it would foster a hospital returning.
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That never materialized, but the hospital has been shuttered to this day.
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And we're hoping that it at some point it will be redeveloped.
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We saw that pending blight and wanted to do what we could to try to revitalize that type of land use.
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And so that drive, ironically, because of a hospital shuttering to clean up the neighborhood, to unshutter the building, uh, is kind of what led you to code enforcement.
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Honestly, it was more than that.
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So around 2015, 2016, we had issues with silver living homes and vacation rentals.
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And I stepped up and I said, you know, I think we can look at this holistically and just talk about what kind of neighborhoods do we want under a larger umbrella of just like what are we looking for in terms of the performance of properties within residential zones, not just how they look.
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And so we uh we went through that process, updated uh multiple sections of the code to address boarding houses and uh vacation rentals or what we call short-term lodging units.
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And once all of that was done and our ordinances were in place, two things happened.
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We had a code compliant supervisor who uh who left to take a job somewhere else, and the city was left with the monumental burden now of actually enforcing the laws that we had just created.
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And so an opportunity arose for me, and I took the promotion to step in uh initially as an interim code compliance supervisor.
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But once I got involved in what they're really out there doing, which is, I think it's one of the least understood aspects of municipal governance.
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I mean, the intrigue that's developed going through the process of investigating land use violations, it was phenomenally exciting to me.
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So we converted that position to a code compliance manager.
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That just started another chain reaction of other issues that the city wanted to deal with.
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Well, yeah, absolutely.
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You oversaw uh park rangers as well.
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They developed a park ranger division in addition to code enforcement, right?
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Yes, yes.
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And that's still under the community development department.
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So I do oversee them as well.
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Uh additionally, we got uh some community outreach workers to help deal with the homeless encampments and all that stuff, yeah.
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And that all falls under code.
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Adam, you really articulated something that we have heard in a different form in every one of these podcast episodes.
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You know, we've had people on from Georgia and Florida and all around uh the country and California, and not one person, I think, has said, uh, yeah, I intended to go into code enforcement.
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I knew what it was.
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My come from a long line of code enforcement people in the family, and I always wanted to go into it.
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You know, what you what you talked about was kind of an indirect route into it that and you ended up liking it, that has really hit us all in code enforcement.
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So it's a circuitous route, but it ends up pulling us in like a tractor beam.
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We can't escape.
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Yeah, you know, if it's not an astronaut, a police officer, a firefighter, or a lifeguard, no kid has known about that job, right?
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Right.
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Yeah, it's so true.
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Yeah.
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And it's it's such a unique and at the same time ubiquitous type of presence, you know, that I think it takes time for people to find their way into it, which I think is better.
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You know, I think people need life experience when they're dealing with code enforcement.
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You know, we have constant conversations about the purpose and to some extent the value of code compliance.
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And I'm speaking as a community development director of a city of 60,000 people.
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So we're small enough.
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We know the council knows all of their constituents, all of the people.
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You know, we're not the coastal commission where if a couple coastal property owners are upset about something, the coastal commission can come back and go, we're here for the 30 million people that are not lucky enough to live where you live.
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When you're dealing with a population that you can know on a first name basis, then you're dealing with constituents.
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And you were talking about enforcement against people who are the same people that often make the community what it is.
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You know, and it's a very fine line.
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It requires a certain level of sophistication and life experience.
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Yeah, no, I I completely agree.
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I mean, code enforcement is vested with discretion and how to wield that
comes a lot of times well from life experience.
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Sometimes it's on the job, sometimes it's before, like your case.
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So let's talk about let's talk about the intersection of zoning and code enforcement.
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So, you know, it's uh probably a pretty well-known fact to a lot of our listeners that uh there is one city, at least of note, in the country that does not care to have zoning laws, city of Houston, Texas.
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Yeah.
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Everybody else likes to set up zones.
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Just off the bat, Adam, how would you just in a nutshell, what is the like five-second explaining it to your mom definition of what the heck zoning is?
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Zoning is the local application of legitimate police power.
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And it comes through to assure that there is quality of life for issues that are not addressed by state or federal laws.
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That's fundamentally the point of zoning.
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Yeah, I agree with you.
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I think of it in the way I visualized that game SimCity.
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Absolutely.
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Right.
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And visually, you would apply zoning in your city, which is like super advanced for some 10-year-old kid just trying to like pass the time.
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And I think of it as how a city slices and dices, or even a county slices and dices up its land to ensure the best use of it and reduce impacts on each other.
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So I think of it like you don't want a single family house next to a smelting plant, for example.
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You don't, you know, you know, apartments will often serve as a buffer between commercial, because it feeds the commercial, feeds the businesses, and the single family residential, for example.
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And so it's a separation of uses in a way that makes sense for community to function, um, which really, when you get into it, everything's kind of zoning, isn't it?
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Isn't everything land use in America?
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At a certain level?
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Absolutely.
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Right?
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I mean, like I just think of going back to like colonial times, you know, there was a blacksmith probably right next to, speaking of kind of like a light industrial smelting use, next to probably his house.
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But if someone else ever bought his house from him, probably not the most ideal location for that place or a tavern.
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Who doesn't love a good tavern until you go home to go to sleep?
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You can still hear your buddies hooting and hollering over some pints of
ale next door, right?
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Absolutely.
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And a lot of that development was dependent on a number of things.
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You know, transportation has had a huge impact on how we zoned things or how the public perceives appropriately placed land uses, whether that's through zoning or not.
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You know, Houston is an interesting uh subject.
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I, you know, there's one architect, Philip Johnson, who designed half of the buildings in that town.
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I mean, that was his playground.
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He essentially designed most of what you see there today.
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That doesn't mean, though, that there aren't regulations in place in Houston.
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They have a lot of restrictions that are recorded through deeds.
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To this day, I have cousins that live in Houston and they live in a community that has a sign that says that certain folks are not allowed.
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Like certain races or something aren't allowed.
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Well, uh else put it this way.
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They put it in the in the positive sense of who is allowed, and it excludes a lot of people.
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That's it were 2026.
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It 2026, of course, none of those regulations apply.
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Right.
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Is the sign still there?
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Yes, it is.
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Wow.
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Now, you also have things that will naturally limit or help organize how uses come together, and that is uh through a function of you know, city infrastructure.
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You know, if you're if you're an industrial area and you need access to railroad lines or large power lines, things of that nature, and the city hasn't placed them, you know, because it's mostly residential in that area, that will naturally kind of create its own its own zoning.
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You're not gonna build my steel mill example at the end of a cul-de-sac surrounded by a bunch of houses.
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The free market would probably dissuade you from doing that.
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And your shareholders would say, you're not gonna make the most profit by doing that, and so it's not gonna work out.
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Now, with that said, you know, Houston does have you know some of its own challenges in terms of its growth, then that will need to be, you know, reconciled.
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One thing that you can notice in how zoning is applied uh nationally, is towns that have more community buy-in, more community ownership, civic participation, things of that nature tend to be much more heavily regulated.
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It's also true that cities that have higher property values tend to be much more heavily regulated.
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Zoning in many ways, and it's been positive and negative, is designed to preserve and maintain property values, maintain establish standards for a minimum amount of aesthetic value of it of a particular area, neighborhood preservation, all of those kinds of things, which ties into code enforcement.
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Kind of speaking of that, Adam, I mean, I do want to get into kind of where the origins of zoning laws are, where the heck did this come from?
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But before we do, real quick, do want to touch on a point you raised.
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I think it's very interesting.
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You said that typically a more affluent community is likely to have more regulations.
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Now, what's the chicken egg there?
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Is it that they are more affluent because there are more regulations that keep it looking nicer and therefore people want to move there and keep it up?
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Or is it that the more affluent it is, the more they want to keep it that way and therefore they squash problems?
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I think it's a function of the investment that is made in properties, uh, meaning that the more money that a property costs, the more desire there's going to be from the property owner to maintain the value of those properties.
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Therefore leading to more regulations and probably more complaints to the city about what's happening in their backyard and NIMBYism and all that kind of stuff.
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Absolutely.
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On the flip side of that, you have cities that are they're establishing themselves in today's world.
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They will often adopt set of zoning regulations that I would say are typical of most cities.
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If they have a target audience in mind, if it's a say a bedroom community that doesn't have a lot of access to jobs, you're generally, I think, going to find, and especially if they're larger homes and they're going to be sold for more, you're probably marketing towards a population that is going to be more accepting of regulation.
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Well, for one, you might just have less people because if it's not densely zoned, such as apartment units or condos, for example, or intergenerational housing, uh, you've simply got less people who are going to be potentially voicing in opposition.
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Right.
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Or a pro.
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Exactly.
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So those communities, I would say, are generally the more master planned.
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You've got somebody coming in, they're going to develop everything.
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So those are newer by definition, because they have the ability to master plan it as opposed to redoing it from inside out.
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Right.
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Now you also have cities that are up and coming or less developed, whether they've been incorporated for, you know, years or decades or not, but they don't have that same type of investment initially come in.
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In that scenario, more development regulations and zoning laws are probably a hindrance to attracting the investment.
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And in order for the city to provide those services, the infrastructure, recreational amenities, things of that nature to attract people to move to that community, they need certain things.
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And one of those certain things is they need revenue.
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So they're generally going to be way more accepting.
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A little more Lawsite Fair auto parks and large box retailers, uh, just to kind of kick that off.
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Kind of the antithesis of community culture and character is the giant warehouse that's a distribution center filled with two people and a bunch of bots.
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Actually, that's a perfect unintentional point in time in which we can hop in our flux capacitor DeLorean and go way back in time to the Founding Fathers and the colonial times.
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Is that where zoning started?
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Did we bring that with us from Jolly Old England?
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Or at what point did zoning and this whole like parsing up the town between different uses come into play?
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So there's a lot of history on zoning.
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In many cultures over the centuries, they have had some type of city planning efforts.
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What we consider today as zoning is really based in, I'll say the 1800s, when specifically New York started overdeveloping, and they didn't have those resources of transportation that were necessary to have incredibly large groups of people working in all of the factories that were being developed.
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You know, this is kind of a post-industrialization type of development.
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And so you had tenement houses right next to industrial plants.
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You had just a state of factories alone and fires and things that they had really put a spotlight on the need to use police power to protect the public health and safety.
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And so there was some federal legislation that was passed that enabled states to adopt zoning regulations.
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The states, in turn, were able to adopt enabling legislation to allow that authority for cities.
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And so that's what happened when California.
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That has been a pendulum over the years.
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And right now, the pendulum is kind of swinging the other way.
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In the state's favor.
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Absolutely.
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The state is telling cities how they should zone.
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Yes.
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But going kind of going back to New York and the tenements and the factories, I mean, what was it?
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What is it that protects health and safety by enacting zoning here?
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What is it about separating where the people are living in the tenements from where they're working in the factories?
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What is it about that that is helpful?
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In that type of situation, you have a high polluting type of development that is very close to where people live.
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And if they're working in that environment and they're also living in that environment, you're naturally going to have negative health consequences.
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Um, and this is not a problem that has absolutely been solved.
00:19:26.960 --> 00:19:29.599
This is a problem that has continued to try to be addressed.
00:19:29.839 --> 00:19:47.839
Most recently, the state of California has required a new policies be incorporated into cities general plans related to environmental justice, uh, and looking at where people are uh living in relation to the negative externalities of their neighborhoods.
00:19:47.920 --> 00:19:50.480
This to kind of put it into practical reality.
00:19:50.640 --> 00:20:01.680
Maybe an aspect of the environmental justice is that people have a right, even if they're impoverished, not to live literally next to the airport or live literally next to a giant polluting factory, for example.
00:20:02.000 --> 00:20:02.240
Yes.
00:20:02.400 --> 00:20:02.559
Yeah.
00:20:02.720 --> 00:20:09.039
And economic justice seeks to provide equity for people that don't have the means to provide it themselves.
00:20:09.200 --> 00:20:14.000
People in Point Loma down in San Diego, at this point, they've chosen to live next to an airport.
00:20:14.079 --> 00:20:15.279
The airport has been there for very long time.
00:20:15.519 --> 00:20:15.839
It's a choice.
00:20:16.079 --> 00:20:16.559
Yeah, sure.
00:20:16.880 --> 00:20:25.279
They have the means to bind together as a community and fight the airport and require that no planes land after, you know, 9:30 or 10 p.m.
00:20:25.599 --> 00:20:28.319
A la Orange County airport next to New Board Beach.
00:20:28.400 --> 00:20:28.799
Yeah, absolutely.
00:20:29.039 --> 00:20:32.000
They have to like shut off their engines when they take off at a certain elevation.
00:20:32.400 --> 00:20:32.799
Exactly.
00:20:32.960 --> 00:20:33.200
Right.
00:20:33.359 --> 00:20:36.799
There's a lot of communities that don't have the same ability to do that.
00:20:36.960 --> 00:20:40.319
You know, recently we've had a hazmat scare here in Orange County.
00:20:40.640 --> 00:20:43.200
It's about the Garden Grove chemical plant that almost exploded.
00:20:43.519 --> 00:20:43.680
Yeah.
00:20:43.839 --> 00:20:46.960
There were 50,000 people who were evacuated.
00:20:47.119 --> 00:20:55.920
And the maps of the evacuation areas, I can see 50,000 people living there, but I have to say, like my first reaction was I can't believe 50,000 people live in this particular area.
00:20:56.240 --> 00:20:58.240
It's a pretty tight circle around that chemical plant.
00:20:58.720 --> 00:21:03.119
It is very tight, but also tight is how close homes are actually to that plant.
00:21:03.279 --> 00:21:03.440
Right.
00:21:03.680 --> 00:21:08.079
That's the kind of environmental justice that I think the state is trying to address.
00:21:08.240 --> 00:21:12.720
It may be a little bit after the fact, and it may be a little bit clumsy trying to clean some of that up.
00:21:12.799 --> 00:21:15.839
But that's what zoning is trying to prevent on the front end of things.
00:21:16.240 --> 00:21:16.880
Right, right.
00:21:17.039 --> 00:21:20.640
You're planning these communities in a way that accomplishes a lot of goals.
00:21:20.720 --> 00:21:23.440
Now, conversely, let's go back to Garden Grove.
00:21:23.680 --> 00:21:37.920
Do you have people living too far away from where they're working, assuming that they're working maybe not at the plant, but maybe at a factory or something, and there isn't the transportation to get them back and forth, you're not able to fill the jobs to do those things in those communities and cities die.
00:21:38.160 --> 00:21:38.559
Absolutely.
00:21:38.720 --> 00:21:51.920
And California, again, you know, they've got greenhouse gas emission uh policies to try to limit new development that is not close to employment centers, trying to reduce the amount of vehicle miles traveled among the state.
00:21:52.079 --> 00:21:58.000
And so we're trying to separate land uses so that people's quality of life can improve.
00:21:58.240 --> 00:21:59.599
We're also trying to reduce that.
00:22:00.319 --> 00:22:03.359
Space so that we're not polluting the environment, right?
00:22:03.519 --> 00:22:07.440
And so zoning now is threading the tightest needle.
00:22:07.759 --> 00:22:09.359
Campbell through the eye of a needle.
00:22:09.519 --> 00:22:10.240
Yeah, right.
00:22:10.400 --> 00:22:11.039
Absolutely.
00:22:11.279 --> 00:22:22.400
I think what's interesting too is you know, California uh does a lot of state level dictates down to cities about what their zoning should be, and this should be that.
00:22:22.640 --> 00:22:26.640
I find, tell me if you totally disagree, but I find it based on a fantasy.
00:22:26.720 --> 00:22:31.119
And that fantasy is always well, there's gonna be uh transit.
00:22:31.279 --> 00:22:34.000
There's a bus line nearby that everybody will take.
00:22:34.240 -->
00:22:40.319
So you can build dense population away from work because everybody's gonna take the light rail.
00:22:40.480 --> 00:22:41.440
What light rail?
00:22:41.599 --> 00:22:42.240
What bus?
00:22:42.400 --> 00:22:49.759
And if you've been on a bus in California, not a lot of the buses you want to get on, and who knows where they'd stop or on the way, how long it's gonna take you to get where you're going.
00:22:49.920 --> 00:22:59.200
And so I feel like in California, there's this desire to try to um center or order cities to develop around something that simply doesn't exist.
00:22:59.440 --> 00:22:59.839
Absolutely.
00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:03.680
Outside of the BART in the Bay Area, which is great, amazing.
00:23:03.839 --> 00:23:08.559
Uh, but we have 480 cities and there's like 10 that are involved with BART.
00:23:08.960 --> 00:23:15.519
Yeah, you need a lot of transportation options to really make multimodal uh planning work that's not autocentric.
00:23:15.680 --> 00:23:25.039
California was based on and the and AAA worked very hard to make sure that California was developed, especially Southern California was developed, autocentric.
00:23:25.200 --> 00:23:32.880
Yeah, in fact, if you drove along or ever saw a picture of Huntington Beach, uh Surf City, USA, by the way, 100 years ago.
00:23:33.039 --> 00:23:38.319
Hell, my grandpa, um, he's been past for some time now, but he was born in 1918.
00:23:38.400 --> 00:23:43.440
And he would tell me, I used to take a trolley up and down PCH.
00:23:43.599 --> 00:23:46.400
And I'm like, we're here a hundred years later.
00:23:46.559 --> 00:23:47.599
Where is the trolley?
00:23:47.759 --> 00:23:51.759
Oh, the gas guys killed it, the oil guys killed it, the car guys killed it.
00:23:51.920 --> 00:24:02.240
It's interesting to me that there's this talk these days about how do we get more mass transit, like as if it's a new concept, but this thing existed a hundred years ago.
00:24:02.400 --> 00:24:02.799
Yeah.
00:24:03.039 --> 00:24:06.400
And what I mean, what role, what role does money play?
00:24:06.559 --> 00:24:15.200
We've talked a little bit about money in terms of affluence and regulations and cities, but what role does big-time interests and money play in zoning?
00:24:15.440 --> 00:24:24.400
And and how zoning plays out in terms of things that existed a hundred years ago, like mass transit, that right now we're like, why don't we have mass transit?
00:24:24.559 --> 00:24:24.880
Yeah.
00:24:25.039 --> 00:24:26.559
No, I think it's a huge influence.
00:24:26.720 --> 00:24:29.200
I think it permeates in a number of ways.
00:24:29.279 --> 00:24:41.200
Uh, you know, in terms of transportation, definitely uh very large interests in what type of transportation is provided, but it also plays out in terms of uh who's developing property.
00:24:41.359 --> 00:24:51.759
Well, a lot of times we have uh large developers come in and they want to develop a large tract area and they'll develop their own
zoning.
00:24:52.000 --> 00:24:54.640
And it's it's what's called a specific plan.
00:24:54.799 --> 00:25:00.799
It establishes standards that are different than what is provided in a municipal code typically or a zoning ordinance.
00:25:00.960 --> 00:25:20.480
And it's for the purposes of ensuring that the development is able to maintain a certain cohesiveness and to also address some issues that may be uh present in the topography or the geography of the area, provide a level of flexibility for larger developments.
00:25:20.720 --> 00:25:24.799
However, those plans are typically done by the developer.
00:25:24.880 --> 00:25:36.400
And so if there's a profit motive involved, then they're going to be looking at putting together zoning regulations that provide for a community that would return the biggest profit to the developer.
00:25:36.559 --> 00:25:39.920
Uh so that's, you know, the city ultimately will approve that.
00:25:40.079 --> 00:25:47.599
You know, those types of developments, you typically don't get a lot of public comment on them because they are out on the outstretches of a community.
00:25:47.839 --> 00:25:50.480
And they were done a long time before anybody moved into care.
00:25:50.880 --> 00:26:09.119
I mean, I think uh I think Irvine, the hallmark of master plan communities in the country that has been replicated uh by other ones, other cities and other states, is a great example that people get frustrated, for example, that why are you building 800 new houses next to my single family house, right?
00:26:09.200 --> 00:26:10.079
In this tract.
00:26:10.160 --> 00:26:16.400
And why are those, you know, so densely house when I'm living living on like 5,000 square foot lot with my single family house?
00:26:16.559 --> 00:26:19.119
It's gonna screw up my traffic, it's gonna impact the schools.
00:26:19.200 --> 00:26:22.640
And I'm gonna go voice my concern to city council.
00:26:22.960 --> 00:26:27.279
City council's probably thinking to themselves, oh, that that plan was approved 30 years ago.
00:26:27.440 --> 00:26:28.640
Like that's done.
00:26:28.799 --> 00:26:34.960
You have literally no ability to change anything around you whatsoever that hasn't already been built out.
00:26:35.119 --> 00:26:35.440
Yes.
00:26:35.680 --> 00:26:36.799
And so that's one side.
00:26:36.960 --> 00:26:39.759
So, you know, kind of switching a little bit gears.
00:26:39.920 --> 00:26:42.640
I mean, I'm thinking of there's a good and a bad to master plan community.
00:26:42.720 --> 00:26:46.079
I mean, the good is that it's, you know, typically very clean and organized.
00:26:46.240 --> 00:26:56.319
The bad is you can't often make U-turns or buy a beer at a pub, or there's certain uses and things that have been kind of bred out of it from advance, if we know from the beginning.
00:26:56.559 --> 00:27:05.119
But why is there such a big disparity sometimes between, you know, you drive through, um, try to think of it, but you know, a really nice community.
00:27:05.279 --> 00:27:11.759
You read Money Magazine, you'll see that there's, you know, they publish like their top 10 communities to live in in the country, and they're always just beautiful.
00:27:11.920 --> 00:27:14.960
There's some really nice one in Iowa, as a matter of fact.
00:27:15.119 --> 00:27:22.640
And contrast that with driving through some of our cities, not to pick on it, but I'd say parts of LA are like this.
00:27:22.880 --> 00:27:31.599
Oakland is one, parts of uh New York's pretty well put together by and large, but parts of that, you know, any big city, or even take cities in the rest belt.
00:27:31.759 --> 00:27:35.119
And they look like they're a third world in certain parts.
00:27:35.359 --> 00:27:42.640
Why do some cities thrive and some cities look like they're on the on the col on the verge of collapse from a zoning perspective?
00:27:42.720 --> 00:27:55.279
There's all sorts of political reasons and everything, but from a zoning perspective, is it safe to say that zoning has utterly failed its police power duties that you mentioned earlier in some of these cities that look like they're, you know, from Mad Max?
00:27:55.839 --> 00:28:07.759
So I I don't know that cities necessarily die from uh one bad decision or uh a few decisions in a in a in quick order.
00:28:07.839 --> 00:28:16.480
It's usually uh due to a kind of a building or progressing uh change in the economic environment.
00:28:16.799 --> 00:28:29.680
You can look at Gary, Indiana, which is to this day a great backdrop for an apocalypse movie, um, with like Birmingham, Alabama, which found itself in a very similar situation.
00:28:29.839 --> 00:28:36.960
Uh I think it went from three uh maybe six hundred thousand people down to like 120,000 people.
00:28:38.079 --> 00:28:40.160
Now it's up to like 300,000 people.
00:28:40.400 --> 00:28:47.119
They they also have some like abandoned, you know, warehouse silo kinds of facilities.
00:28:47.279 --> 00:28:50.880
Some of them they've repurposed into something pretty cool.
00:28:51.119 --> 00:28:55.599
You know, I I have to go back to it's that it's that community buy-in.
00:28:56.000 --> 00:29:05.279
You know, are people there because they got a job at a at an auto factory and the auto factory closed, and there's nothing else that the city provides.
00:29:05.599 --> 00:29:07.680
Detroit was Detroit during the Great Recession.
00:29:07.920 --> 00:29:08.079
Right.
00:29:08.160 --> 00:29:09.839
And Detroit's actually an interesting one.
00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:19.759
That was a large enough city where I really think that the uh civic leaders uh at that time uh should have been making some different decisions.
00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:26.640
You know, not every city does today what they were initially established to do.
00:29:26.880 --> 00:29:58.960
And so uh you can look at cities like Phoenix and Austin that have gone through some transitions over the years, but have really kind of put a lot of investment in
attracting new businesses, especially technology forward or medical uh related companies, uh doing really advanced work that were that were not what the companies that were in those cities a decade or or two decades or a hundred years ago were doing.
00:29:59.279 --> 00:30:06.400
So is that to say that if cities don't adjust with the times, they're at risk of dying?
00:30:06.799 --> 00:30:07.440
Absolutely.
00:30:07.599 --> 00:30:22.000
You know, there's there's some cities, like maybe uh, I don't know, Pasadena, where they're probably gonna be okay with the economic fluctuations and the comings and goings of certain industries.
00:30:22.160 --> 00:30:27.759
Um, just because it's a very desirable place to live.
00:30:28.000 --> 00:30:33.599
And they could probably get away with maintaining their visitor-serving attractions.
00:30:34.000 --> 00:30:39.200
You get the rose bowl there, and you get the uh rose parade there, and you've got some kind of base.
00:30:39.519 --> 00:30:44.319
Yeah, they they've got they they've got something there that's going to kind of help anchor them.
00:30:44.559 --> 00:30:56.160
Every city along the coast in California, uh, especially south of LA, has something that is it is always going to be a draw, and that's the ocean.
00:30:56.400 --> 00:31:01.200
There's just there's there's no way that they're gonna lose that feature.
00:31:01.359 --> 00:31:05.839
Even if the coastal erosion, you know, takes away a lot of the beaches.
00:31:06.000 --> 00:31:13.680
Uh there the investment I'm I I I know we will reinvest to make sure that those amenities are still available in some fashion.
00:31:14.000 --> 00:31:21.359
And if it goes too far, I guess now you've just got a a new line of oceanfront houses, you know, that are a mile in or half a mile in.
00:31:21.440 --> 00:31:21.519
Yeah.
00:31:21.920 --> 00:31:24.480
You bought on the other side of the street, we're lucky for you, and now it's okay.
00:31:24.720 --> 00:31:25.440
Here you are, yeah.
00:31:25.759 --> 00:31:29.200
A lot of cities that don't have those types of natural draws.
00:31:29.519 --> 00:31:37.440
Without those, then you're dealing with a a city that needs to remain adaptable and needs to remain flexible.
00:31:37.599 --> 00:31:49.359
And so zoning makes a a huge impact when it comes to long-range planning and the what the future of the city is going to be.
00:31:49.680 --> 00:31:58.480
Government by its very nature is reactionary, and it's reactionary because it's it's government by the people for the people.
00:31:58.640 --> 00:32:03.680
Well, the people are the ones that make you know changes, right?
00:32:03.839 --> 00:32:09.200
Um, that sway the economy from one way to another, develop new preferences.
00:32:09.440 --> 00:32:17.759
It the leaders are in that group, and so it's not until those changes occur that the leaders are going to react.
00:32:18.160 --> 00:32:26.559
Either we want more of this, and the business people who are running it say we need
more of this, or people are pissed off about it, we want less of this, we want regulations.
00:32:26.799 --> 00:32:27.119
Exactly.
00:32:27.200 --> 00:32:28.480
And so that's a great point.
00:32:28.640 --> 00:32:44.240
Yeah, you have this environment where it's going to be reactionary, and so the question is uh how much flexibility do you want to maintain so that you can you can adjust faster to changes in the environment?
00:32:44.559 --> 00:32:51.519
Or um how quickly can you can you adapt when new situations arise?
00:32:51.759 --> 00:33:20.640
And I think that a lot of the cities that have died were cities that when they were powerful, when they were, you know, uh a huge draw, either from industry or or whatever other sectors brought the investment in, they weren't doing the things that cities should be doing to ensure that if something should change drastically, that there's still a reason for people to live there.
00:33:20.880 --> 00:33:26.319
You know, great school districts, uh recreational facilities, different kinds of jobs.
00:33:26.480 --> 00:33:40.480
Are we seeing a little bit of this on the much larger international scale with some of these wealthy oil-producing Gulf countries trying to diversify enough oil as countries like the US are trying to move away from oil dependence?
00:33:40.640 --> 00:33:40.799
Yeah.
00:33:40.880 --> 00:33:41.039
Right.
00:33:41.119 --> 00:33:42.720
And they're like, what else can we bring here?
00:33:42.880 --> 00:33:44.720
And so I think of like Detroit.
00:33:44.880 --> 00:33:52.880
I mean, Detroit was all about the autos until that became not financially sustainable here because they were getting built cheaper elsewhere.
00:33:52.960 --> 00:33:55.359
And all of a sudden, Detroit, I mean, just imploded.
00:33:55.440 --> 00:34:01.519
And you could buy a block for 10,000 bucks, I remember, in 09, which I wish I had done because now they've actually revitalized.
00:34:01.680 --> 00:34:10.559
Uh, Jamestown, New York doesn't get enough uh front page news out there because that used to be the epicenter for furniture in our country.
00:34:10.719 --> 00:34:15.679
Well, furniture ended up getting built in Vietnam and India and China and so on.
00:34:15.760 --> 00:34:20.159
And so they imploded, but they've actually been revitalizing, which is interesting.
00:34:20.320 --> 00:34:22.079
Buffalo, same deal.
00:34:22.239 --> 00:34:24.960
I think their population's like at half.
00:34:25.119 --> 00:34:30.800
And then you consider the entire Rust Belt where they used to produce a bunch of steel, and uh, that stuff didn't happen.
00:34:30.880 --> 00:34:40.639
And so they either change with the times to see it coming and diversify what keeps people there, which is jobs, um, or they don't and they die.
00:34:41.119 --> 00:34:42.800
And then who knows what happens.
00:34:43.119 --> 00:34:48.800
Do cities ever, I mean, we're you you're not using the word death of a city in the in the sense of people moved the heck out of there.
00:34:49.119 --> 00:34:52.559
But I think of a place, a literal ghost town.
00:34:52.719 --> 00:35:10.079
And I what what comes to mind for me is Bodhi, California, yeah, or Calico, which is more of a touristy made, made up ghost town, but Bodhi, California, near Mammoth, on the side of California that no one ever goes to that borders Nevada.
00:35:10.400 --> 00:35:14.000
And Bodhi is literally a literally a ghost town.
00:35:14.159 --> 00:35:16.480
I think they have a population of zero.
00:35:17.039 --> 00:35:18.079
Have you been there before?
00:35:18.239 --> 00:35:18.639
I have.
00:35:18.800 --> 00:35:20.559
And you and they have actual buildings.
00:35:20.639 --> 00:35:24.159
You look at their buildings, like it looks like people just left because their stuff is there.
00:35:24.320 --> 00:35:25.119
Yeah, right.
00:35:25.360 --> 00:35:29.039
What causes the city to literally disappear like that?
00:35:29.360 --> 00:35:46.239
In planning, you know, it it's interesting how uh theories uh were developed um uh and relied upon to inform a lot of the urban planning that occurred in the 1950s, 60s, 70s.
00:35:46.400 --> 00:35:56.320
It wasn't until academic research really got a hold of um urban planning uh where legitimate studies were conducted uh to determine things.
00:35:56.719 --> 00:36:04.239
One um one such study, or I should say, theory, was about the tipping point.
00:36:04.639 --> 00:36:11.679
Um, and it was looking at cities like Compton, which uh was that was established as a sunset town.
00:36:11.920 --> 00:36:13.119
What do you mean it's sunset town?
00:36:13.280 --> 00:36:15.519
Sunset towns are uh white only.
00:36:15.840 --> 00:36:16.480
Oh, wow.
00:36:16.719 --> 00:36:17.360
Yeah, okay.
00:36:17.599 --> 00:36:22.159
Um it was established as a reprieve for uh the white community.
00:36:23.280 --> 00:36:26.800
And it's changed over the years drastically.
00:36:27.039 --> 00:36:38.880
Um but the theory that was being discussed um back in the 60s, early 70s was about how uh what is the tipping point?
00:36:39.119 --> 00:36:42.880
How do cities go from one status to another?
00:36:42.960 --> 00:36:45.599
And and and it could be applied to anything.
00:36:45.840 --> 00:36:53.599
In this particular study, they were looking at the racial mix of communities, uh specifically switching from white to uh black.
00:36:54.079 --> 00:37:05.119
In that uh theory, which again, this is you know not based in academic research, they discussed how the appropriate mix of a community is different for different people.
00:37:05.360 --> 00:37:14.639
And so it's not like one black family moved into a white neighborhood, and then all of a sudden all of the other white families said, Nope, that's it, we're out of here.
00:37:14.960 --> 00:37:24.239
It was that one black family moved in, and one or two other families said, Oh man, there's one black family here, that's too many for me.
00:37:24.559 --> 00:37:40.559
And then they moved out, and then
some other di black families moved in, and then other people whose tipping point was three to five black families is too much, they moved out, and then you just have this slower progression, but there isn't an actual tipping point.
00:37:40.960 --> 00:37:51.360
For those cities that you are positing here where they're they are now at zero residence, I think you had a slow out migration.
00:37:51.519 --> 00:38:01.440
Now it may have started with a large portion of the population, but I can almost guarantee you you had people that were there saying, No, no, we're gonna make this town survive.
00:38:01.840 --> 00:38:08.639
And you got to these people who who, you know, that when the town was say 50% of its original population, yeah.
00:38:08.800 --> 00:38:14.159
You know, you had a few people that said, Oh, this is too small of a town for me now, and they left.
00:38:14.400 --> 00:38:15.760
Nobody came in.
00:38:15.920 --> 00:38:20.159
And then you had more people going, oh, there's only 35% of the original town.
00:38:20.320 --> 00:38:21.760
That's too few people for me.
00:38:21.920 --> 00:38:30.320
And he just he just becomes a death spiraling down until you had one person, probably the mayor, who said, I have no one to mayor over anymore.
00:38:30.400 --> 00:38:32.000
Yeah, it's of the people, and it's me.
00:38:32.239 --> 00:38:34.000
All of my minions evaporated.
00:38:34.239 --> 00:38:34.960
No, that's interesting.
00:38:35.039 --> 00:38:39.599
Yeah, I mean, you lose people, you also lose amenities.
00:38:39.760 --> 00:38:41.599
There's no one there to run the business anymore.
00:38:41.760 --> 00:38:49.519
So the business shutters, and you know, now you went from a place you could go to buy something, maybe a general store back then or something, and now it is boarded up.
00:38:49.760 --> 00:38:50.239
It's ugly.
00:38:50.400 --> 00:38:51.679
No one wants to look at that, right?
00:38:51.760 --> 00:38:55.840
And then you lose maybe police officers and the place isn't as safe, and you lose this or that, and so on.
00:38:55.920 --> 00:38:57.039
Eventually you're out of there.
00:38:57.199 --> 00:39:07.360
Um, I was thinking of myself, not as much as you know, um migration among along racial lines, but more along movement of transportation.
00:39:07.440 --> 00:39:09.360
There's so many, there's so many.
00:39:09.519 --> 00:39:13.760
Anybody's driven across the country has probably seen or asked themselves, why is this town here?
00:39:13.920 --> 00:39:17.039
This is in the middle of nowhere, and it's not even a nice looking area.
00:39:17.199 --> 00:39:18.159
Why is this town here?
00:39:18.320 --> 00:39:21.199
They're not here for the natural forest as next to it or whatever.
00:39:21.360 --> 00:39:26.159
It's because a train line was built there and it became a stopping point for some reason or another.
00:39:26.400 --> 00:39:28.320
Or uh Route 66.
00:39:28.800 --> 00:39:32.880
How many towns were birthed by Route 66?
00:39:33.039 --> 00:39:38.800
How many towns died because Route 66 was built at a different place and they were located?
00:39:39.039 --> 00:39:41.519
Amboy is uh still going strong.
00:39:41.599 --> 00:39:42.960
I think they have five people that live there.
00:39:43.199 --> 00:39:43.599
Amboy?
00:39:43.760 --> 00:39:44.159
Amboy.
00:39:44.320 --> 00:39:44.639
Amboy.
00:39:44.719 --> 00:39:45.599
Where state is that in?
00:39:45.840 --> 00:39:48.480
If you ever have a chance to go through Amboy, take it.
00:39:48.800 --> 00:39:49.440
In Nevada?
00:39:49.840 --> 00:39:50.079
California.
00:39:50.320 --> 00:39:51.039
Is that in California?
00:39:51.360 --> 00:39:51.519
Wow.
00:39:51.679 --> 00:39:52.960
A little old Amboy.
00:39:53.039 --> 00:39:53.199
Okay.
00:39:53.440 --> 00:39:55.440
You know, honestly, you know, it's interesting.
00:39:55.519 --> 00:40:07.679
You know, we talk about resources um and and their impact on cities, and uh, you know, how zoning is is designed to um protect that investment, essentially.
00:40:08.000 --> 00:40:14.800
But you know, it it's really interesting to see how cities uh form, I'll say more naturally.
00:40:15.280 --> 00:40:17.920
Um, you know, I mentioned Amboy.
00:40:18.159 --> 00:40:21.280
I, you know, I'm a huge fan of the Salton Sea.
00:40:21.360 --> 00:40:22.559
I just I cannot get enough of that.
00:40:22.800 --> 00:40:24.559
Yeah, what an interesting land use concept.
00:40:25.199 --> 00:40:30.559
Two hours from where I live, and it is two worlds from the one I live in.
00:40:30.719 --> 00:40:31.679
It is amazing.
00:40:31.840 --> 00:40:34.400
I mean, you've got Slab City out there.
00:40:34.719 --> 00:40:46.559
Slab City is along the uh uh military base, it's a no man's land, but they have a library, they have art installations, and they're open and functioning.
00:40:46.719 --> 00:40:47.360
It is open.
00:40:47.599 --> 00:40:47.840
Wow.
00:40:48.239 --> 00:40:56.159
And it, you know, they there's not a whole lot of business or stuff to do there, but you can go there and you can check out this little community.
00:40:56.400 --> 00:41:03.920
This is this is what uh you can do when there's absolutely no zoning involved, and it's done.
00:41:04.000 --> 00:41:06.239
Uh I mean, it's it's actually quite impressive.
00:41:06.480 --> 00:41:09.119
Now it's it's a bunch of RVs, right?
00:41:09.280 --> 00:41:15.360
But they all have their little areas and they've got landscaping and whatever else they can get to grow in the desert.
00:41:15.599 --> 00:41:16.880
I mean, it's it's phenomenal.
00:41:17.199 --> 00:41:28.400
Salton Sea is an interesting tale of the life and currently death, uh, maybe life support of a city because there is the city of Salton.
00:41:28.960 --> 00:41:29.440
What do they call it?
00:41:29.519 --> 00:41:30.320
Salton City or something?
00:41:30.480 --> 00:41:30.960
Salton City.
00:41:31.119 --> 00:41:31.920
Salt and City, right?
00:41:32.000 --> 00:41:38.239
Now, in the 60s, this used to be the
playground of a Hollywood famous.
00:41:38.400 --> 00:41:43.840
And you go out there and you water ski on this giant sea that's ultra full of salt.
00:41:44.000 --> 00:41:46.880
Um, and you have a great time and you're extra bullying, I guess, because of that.
00:41:47.119 --> 00:41:51.199
You go out there now, people who live there, these aren't these aren't people who like other people.
00:41:51.360 --> 00:41:55.519
These are people who move there to be left alone and do things without zoning on their back.
00:41:55.760 --> 00:41:57.920
Yeah, you can get a lot pretty cheap there.
00:41:58.079 --> 00:41:58.880
I bet you can.
00:41:58.960 --> 00:42:00.880
You know, funny story on that.
00:42:01.119 --> 00:42:27.280
Uh my grandpa ended up coming across a little plot of land on Salt and Sea that we I remember going to as a kid and having to wear a uh, I would wear a little like um a diving mask over my face because the the sea was literally littered with dead fish because you know, it evaporates because it's hot as hell out there, and then the salt, you know, content concentrates, all the fish die, and the cycle of life continues.
00:42:27.440 --> 00:42:34.159
And he got that from painting someone's uh barn, and the guy couldn't pay him except in this little plot of land.
00:42:34.239 --> 00:42:42.079
And we held on to that thing thinking one day they're gonna declare this place an ecological disaster and the feds are gonna put money into it, and this thing will be worth a bunch.
00:42:42.320 --> 00:42:43.119
We thought wrong.
00:42:43.360 --> 00:42:46.639
You know, I don't I don't think that's out of the cards, and I don't mean to we sold it.
00:42:46.719 --> 00:42:54.480
So now I I, you know, I don't mean to divert too much, but there are migratory birds that now require the Salton Sea as part of their migration, right?
00:42:54.639 --> 00:42:57.039
And so I think there is gonna be some investment in that.
00:42:57.199 --> 00:42:59.920
I don't know if it's gonna be more than a bird sanctuary.
00:43:00.159 --> 00:43:01.920
Well, you've heard it here first, guys.
00:43:02.000 --> 00:43:09.840
If you are interested in a super speculative property purchase or you just want to own a lot of land, Salt and Sea, Salton City is where it's at.
00:43:10.159 --> 00:43:12.079
Buy plastic uh water lines.
00:43:12.239 --> 00:43:14.960
Plastic water lines copper will be removed from your home.
00:43:15.119 --> 00:43:15.760
There you go.
00:43:15.920 --> 00:43:17.280
No offense to our friends out there.
00:43:17.440 --> 00:43:20.159
Yeah, but true though, but that's a city though that didn't make it.
00:43:20.400 --> 00:43:22.000
Next time on part two.
00:43:25.599 --> 00:43:31.199
Does zoning ever save a city that is on the downswing?
00:43:31.679 --> 00:43:34.400
I will say that it plays an important part.
00:43:34.559 --> 00:43:40.239
There were a lot of Southern California coastal cities that were really dumps in the 1970s.
00:43:40.400 --> 00:43:42.000
They were not attractive at all.
00:43:42.159 --> 00:43:46.800
And so they started taking on things like historic preservation.
00:43:46.880 --> 00:43:48.639
And the city says, you know what?
00:43:48.800 --> 00:43:51.119
These are part of the charm of this city.
00:43:51.280 --> 00:43:59.760
That's something that just starts to build a little bit of momentum, and 20 years later, you've got, you know, Laguna Beach.
00:44:05.840 --> 00:44:07.599
Thank you for joining us on this journey.
00:44:07.679 --> 00:44:13.519
If you enjoyed what you heard, don't forget to subscribe, follow, rates, and review us wherever you're listening right now.
00:44:13.760 --> 00:44:15.039
Until next time.