Criminals in Our Midst
He could have been anybody: a paunchy, middle-aged man with a neatly-trimmed fringe of gray hair around his balding cranium, a twinkle in his eye, a ready smile…just the sort of countenance to inspire trust in the unsuspecting. He waited, patient and serene, at the edge of the neighborhood, waiting, waiting: waiting for the children coming home from school, for the bored housewife, for the lonely old fellow shuffling down the sidewalk. The city had already marked him for a pariah and had set up a Coventry for his sort, a gray-walled windowless enclosure where they were to be sequestered, but here he was, lurking at the edge of the neighborhood, a threat to its serenity, to the American way of life itself. He was…the corner grocer.
Or maybe he was a shoemaker, or sold bicycles or cleaned clothes. It doesn't matter: in most recently-built neighborhoods in the United States, he is deemed a threat to the public order and is therefore banned. In an astounding display of collective stupidity the zoning boards of this country have taken the original separation of uses doctrine of the Euclid, Ohio, ordinances of the thirties, which were designed to keep heavy industry such as steel mills and lead smelters away from residential areas, and generalized them to apply to any business whatsoever, no matter how pleasant or convenient its presence might be in a neighborhood. Nowadays, if a patch of land is used for housing, it may be used ONLY for housing; if it is used for business, ONLY for business. We have made Main Street, USA, that mainstay of political speeches and wistful reminiscence, illegal in most parts of the country. One of the bigger impediments to the development of a truly civilized culture, a culture whose members are not condemned to strap themselves into those bulky metal prostheses called "cars" for every chore, one where neighbors meet each other on the sidewalk and talk, rather than wave abstractly through tinted glass as they roar past each other at 40 per on the road to the megastore for a loaf of bread, is the practice of commercial and residential zoning. It is illegal to have a corner grocery store in a residential area in most parts of our country.
While this is changing in some places as concepts of the New Urbanism, Traditional Neighborhood Development, and Transit-Oriented Development become familiar, mixed-use neighborhoods are the exception, and often enough the hard-fought-for exception, and far from the rule. The rule remains the tract of suburban-style homes regressing endlessly over the horizon in one corner, and the huddle of big-box discount outlets with their shelves of redundant Taiwanese boomboxes and their cellbanks of hormone-saturated frozen hyperchickens in the other…and off to one side, perhaps on the dozer-flattened crown of some former hill, squats an office park in all its grey serenity, surveying its domain from behind the asphalt ramparts of its parking lots. And looping among them all, like Laocoön's snakes, coil after unending coil of macadam scaled with cars. The only thing you don't see much of is…people. They're all in boxes, hunched and nervous as they hurry from home to office to store to school to home. No wonder most Americans do little other than watch TV in their houses. Every chore is truly a chore when you have no choice but to strap yourself in for another drive to do it.
Wouldn't it be better if we broke up the monotony of ragged lawns with a corner store or two? Would it really bring democracy tumbling down around our ears if, instead of driving six miles to the illusory bargains of the Wal-Mart, we could walk a block or two and pick up milk, a newspaper, or a box of nails, or get the elbow stitched on that old sports jacket? Of course, no one wants Wal-Mart right next door--the things are ugly and the traffic that they generate oppressive, and while they may be a great place for the neighbor's kid to work in they don't really pay enough for yours. But imagine this: every two or three blocks, one lot is set aside for Neighborhood Commercial zoning. There must be at least two, but not more than four, small shops on a corner lot. There is no on-site parking. There is a bike rack, there's a couple of trees, the café or deli has set out a table or two under an umbrella, and a fountain bubbles in the back by the cleaner's shop. Maybe the café stays open late, or the newsstand, or the general store. People of all ages come and go, there's the hum of conversation, neighbors meet and gossip and catch up on what their kids are doing when they're at each other's houses…and community grows.
It'll never happen at the Wal-Mart, but it could happen on your street…if only they would let it, the criminals in our midst who have sold the souls of our neighborhoods to the builders of tilt-up warehouse stores and cookie-cutter stucco ghettos. If only they would let it happen. If only you would make it happen.... I think it's worth a try.
Go to A Word from Eric Miller
