credit:Dean Terry

credit: Dean Terry

Michael Lewyn, a professor at Florida Coastal School of Law, recently published his case study on driving and sprawl. This is important to you because he used Jacksonville laws and zoning regulations for all his research.

Micheal has appeared on Urban Jacksonville before with the Car Free in Jacksonville series and The Case Against Roads.

I have permission to reproduce the case study here and I will do so over the next few days. Let’s get started with Part 1, Introduction and Analysis. Tomorrow… Jacksonville: Zoned for Sprawl.

Introduction

Numerous commentators have noted that the automobile-dependent sprawl that dominates American cities and suburbs is a product not of the free market alone, but of government zoning regulations. [FN1] The purpose of this paper is to explain in detail how this is so–not just by citing one or two regulations, but by showing in detail how land use regulations impose automobile-dependent development upon Americans. In particular, this paper parses the Municipal Code of Jacksonville, Florida, America’s most car-dependent large city, [FN2] and unearths its most antipedestrian, antitransit provisions.

Analysis

Jacksonville’s Code disfavors pedestrians and transit users both through zoning laws that encourage low-density, single-use *840 development and through parking and street design regulations that make walking unpleasant. Each of these sets of regulations will be addressed in turn.

Footnotes

[FN1]. See, e.g., Brannon P. Denning & Rachel M. Lary, Retail Store Size-Capping ordinances and the Dormant Commerce Clause Doctrine, 37 URB. LAW. 907, 910 (2005) (”[Z]oning has actually contributed to sprawl because of its focus on ‘holding down densities and separating different types of uses.”‘ (quoting Richard Briffault, Smart Growth and American Land Use Law, 21 ST. LOUIS U. PUB. L. REV. 253, 255 (2002))); Nicole Stelle Garnett, Unsubsidizing Suburbia, 90 MINN. L. REV. 459, 487 (2005) (reviewing RICHARDSON DILWORTH, THE URBAN ORIGINS OF SUBURBAN AUTONOMY (2005)) (”Exclusionary zoning and growth controls also contribute to suburban sprawl ….”).

[FN2]. See U.S. CENSUS BUREAU, STATISTICAL ABSTRACT OF THE UNITED STATES: 2004-2005, at 695 (124th ed. 2004) (finding that 92.6% of Jacksonville commuters drove alone or carpooled to work in 2000, the highest percentage among America’s twenty-five largest cities; only 2.1% of Jacksonville commuters used public transit to get to work, and only 1.8% of Jacksonville commuters walked to work).

Copyright © 2007 by the Widener University School of Law; Michael Lewyn

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