03-17-2021, 12:05 PM
(03-17-2021, 11:43 AM)ijmorlan Wrote: “Employment lands” is such a nonsense designation. As if a few zoning people have any clue at all where it makes sense for employment activities to locate.
It makes sense to say “this part of the City is for loud and/or dangerous industrial activities”, and “this part of the City is for people who want to live quietly”; but it makes no sense at all to say “this part of the City is for activities that have lots of employees”.
In particular, planners have no business at all saying that stores and offices should not have apartments above them. In the absence of an actual reason to restrict the freedom of property owners and occupiers to use it how they want, society doesn’t have a right to do so. And “some people might not want to live there” isn’t a valid reason to prevent people from living there.
The city definition of employment lands is also extremely narrow in non-obvious ways, for example, it excludes office buildings.