House with big yard.
Jim Dalrymple, a Salt Lake City journalist, publishes the About Town blog, where he opines about urban land use in the Provo-Salt Lake City region of Utah. I’ve begun following the blog because he asks many of the same kinds of questions I do, informed by similar free-market sensibilities.
In a recent missive, he asked what’s so great about yards? “Most cities, including those in Utah, have vast tracts of land zoned to require yards.” But yards are just one amenity associated with housing. While some people may value yards, he says, others may value bigger closets, larger kitchens or cable TV. Or, I might add, they might prefer smaller yards but greater access to biking trails and public parks.
Indeed, some people might prefer not to have a yard at all. Yards take time and effort to maintain. Lawns must be mowed, leaves raked and bushes pruned — time that could be devoted to mountain biking! Yards also consume water and fertilizer, an offense to anyone with an acute environmental consciousness.
Concludes Dalrymple: “It makes no more sense for governments to require yards than it does for them to require people to buy other amenities.”
Bacon’s bottom line: Zoning codes that mandate minimum lot sizes — in other words, minimum yard sizes — create a mismatch between peoples’ preferences and what the real estate market provides. Many people wind up spending money for something they don’t even want. And local governments wind up paying more to provide services to a population smeared over a larger geographic area. Here’s a radical idea: Why not just let developers and home builders create housing product that meets the market demand?
— JAB
