The Argument for Zoning in the UK

We’re already doing it, actually. Or sleepwalking into it; as so often, seems to me, to be our preferred method of embracing change or challenge.

We’re a sleepy nation these days – or maybe it’s just me in late January, but this is my first blog entry, which I’ve submitted myself to writing after repeated prompting from a number of associates. Forgive me if my lethargy manifests in this debut in the form of poor verb placement, sloppy word choice, overuse of commas, sentences ending with prepositions, and the suchlike, within. I’m not even going to spelcheck it.

Zoning. It’s already popular in the United States. Codified in state laws and urban planning whatevers. Zoning is where town planners have the power to decide what building is used for what; and how many of each building the town should have.
It’s necessary evil for the Americans; whose ambition to start businesses and build the personal American dream is boundless. So they throttle, bottleneck this energy, and town planners are charge with the duty and power to ensure that every Main Street has a Post Office, a Convenience Store, a Barber Shop, an Auto Garage – a variety of free, independent, yet necessary businesses / services available to the populace.
It varies from State to State and from city to city, please forgive if this essay is a little sloppy in research or indeed, truth – it’s not intended to be a survey or analysis, but an argument for adopting formalised policy.

This writer believes that it could be the Saviour of the British High Street – though the patient is already something of an asthmatic quadruple amputee. That’s the High Street; not the writer – who wheezes onward on four functional limbs, occasionally a viable head, too.

We’re already doing it. In contemporary British urban construction projects – shoebox flats stacked on top of ground floor retail spaces – certain retail spaces are engineered (during the design phase) to become restaurants, cafes, fashion outlets, mini-markets, estate agent offices (to sell all the flats above) and so on.

The informed reader should be asking at this point – if they don’t already know – why it is that between America and Britain, we both seem to have got it backwards(?)
If we’re already doing it, why is it not regulated or formalised in law? We love writing endless regulations! This writer is in possession of qualifications in a few aspects of our Building Regulations; mostly electrical.

Doubtless various components of formal Zoning are already legally codified – we have the Planning Permission procedures – but they’re not codified in our national consciousness.
Nor do they seem to be very well enforced. A tour of many parades and high streets will reveal two or three fried chicken parlours next door to each other. Similarly for betting shops, and beauty salons. Or as is increasingly popular – vacant retail spaces. But I digress.
Why is it so popular in America, where regulation and government interference is a sin?

Alright, answers: more than throttling unbridled American ambition, zoning preserves another sacred America value: competition. If Starbucks opens a franchise on a main street or in a mall in America, Costa wants to open one as well! So does McDonalds; and so does “Mom and Pop, Inc.” Zoning is both the American’s restraint and release valve. Having it formalised and codified at least ensures that the system benefits those who are willing to do their homework, rather than rush blindly into business.
For Britian, we don’t like zoning because, quite frankly, we think we’re above it, and lazy thinking informs this false superiority. For some of us, we don’t think beyond our scepticism of Government / Council competence / accountability. For others who adore regulation, we obsess over minutiae – an example would be the (now passing?) fad of steel measures for drinks measurement in pubs. For if we can expect a pub to serve at millilitre accuracy, surely we can expect the landlord to keep everything else in order – from his accounts to overall business viability, location, footfall and so on… and again, we’re lazy. So we micromanage fine details of how business may operate, exhaust ourselves poring over those minutiae, yawn and write off the overall layout of a high street as our noble sacrifice to the Free Market. Everyone’s happy, right? Except that we’re not.

The Yanks aren’t particularly happier either. Bogged down in bidding wars, endless backhand deals; they’re just as exhausted as we are.

But we have the power now to do something about it. As I’ve said, we’re already sleepwalking into Zoning as our architects and arcological engineers / concrete sociologists demark new developments into distinct residential and retail “spaces”, assign the fate of retail spaces during the design phase, tender to bidding companies prior to completion of the projects. But these people match in unaccountability what the Americans offer in corruption or, in many cases, virtue.

The sensible solution would be to embrace and codify British Zoning. If you’re groaning or scoffing; well, firstly I’m stunned and appreciative that you’ve made it this far through these lazily collated ramblings. But second, I appeal to you reader, to consider that having dedicated Zoning officers for our towns and cities might / would actually take a tremendous strain off our minds. No longer would building contractors have to deal with both client and public concerns; and the public would have an ombudsman with the insight of an engineer and the accountability of an MP. Who in turn would have more time to focus on the other concerns of his Constituents.

I’m sure greater minds than my own; or just minds, are already working away at making this happen. How successful they’ll be this writer can only guess, and poorly at that.

To start with an Argument and end in an Appeal has an obvious parallel with a failed legal case; but this essay was only intended to seal the pan before heartier morsels of prose can be proffered.