Drunk Talk
Re "the point of zoning codes".
Zoning started in the Progressive Era, largely as a health-based thing, much like building codes. The idea was to separate tanneries, power plants, refineries, and other noxious industry from residences.
It quickly became used, however, to keep out "undesireable" categories of people, as well, by mandating minimum lot size, mainimum dwelling size, maximum density, and so forth, in order to raise the cost of housing above what the undesireables could pay.
This particular form of isolationist conservatism was, of course, cloaked in scientific sounding rationals that appealed to the modernist mindset. Baloney like, "low-density housing is better for the environment" (quite the opposite is true, empirically) and "strict separation of housing types and business types makes transportation systems more efficient" (again, exactly opposite, empirically).
There are also certain inertial factors keeping all this going - that local governments (and consultants) are pretty loath to take the time to develop an entirely new system, custom-made system when they can just lift the zoning from the next town over, and that people are blindly protective of their homes, and zoning out anything that's different is what they know of, even if the long-term or large-scale effects are undesireable. (See also: cul-de-sacs.)
Finally, there's the fact that zoning has been tested by the US Supreme Court and found kosher (Euclid v. Ambler, in the 1920s), and nobody wants to be the guinea pig for the next thing, so radical innovation in land-use regulation is not possible: everything has to look like zoning and quack like zoning to minimize the chance of a lawsuit.
"What's the point of zoning laws," is pretty easy, in general - "regulate the use of land to reduce negative impacts on neighbors and check the excesses of the market."
It's figuring out what _specifically_ you want to prevent/promote and how to _effectively_ do so that's troublesome.
Along the lines of Karate places downtown: You know your crappy suburban neighborhood is going down when all that opens are "LA Insurance" and cell phone stores.
I hate having to drive to go anywhere useful, or walk at least a mile one way.
I also hate having to drive 30 minutes to hang out with people, let's start a commune! :p
I'm voting for dollar stores in anchor positions in old strip malls and abandoned shopping center parking lots used for storage of excess new car inventory as signs of decline.
I gotta ask, what exactly wrong with a Karate studio downtown? Is it any less vital than a book shop or an insurance agency? Do they not "belong" downton or something? There's that whiff of "crunchy" snobbery again.
Better a karate studio than a vacancy.
Drover's right, I think - a karate studio, and pretty much anything else, is better than a vacant storefront.
Tattoo parlors in the downtown are commonly cited as a sign of the endtimes, but I fail to see the problem - a tattoo parlor is no different than a barber shop, in my mind.
The problem is when every storefront on the street is a tattoo parlor or a karate studio. Or, for that matter, when every storefront is a bank. Homogeneity = teh suck.
I think that's more or less the point, Murph - it's not a single store that's bad, it's that it's usually a sign that other similar stores are coming. I'd guess after they proliferate, and fail, the vacancies start (which I think we all agree isn't a good thing).
Personally, I wasn't aware of a bias against Karate places, but the dollar store thing strikes a chord (more than the cheap-o insurance and cell phone stores that I mentioned prior).
The dollar stores popping up in droves scares me a bit - it's not a good sign - Especially the nearby strip mall with two (and the check-cashing store next door). If being concerned about where the neighborhood you live in is going is snobbery, then so be it.
This doesn't just apply for towns/urban areas, it's happening in the older suburbs, at least around here (western Detroit 'burbs). Its affect isn't as noticable in the burbs though, since everyone's used to driving all over the place as it is.
All said though, I'll have to agree with Dave (I think I am, at least 
- I'd rather live in a place that has its own charm than another homogenized McCity, even if it's whole level of charm is that it's NOT exactly like every other place in this country/world.
Dave - I seem to recall having conversations, many years ago, where you didn't see sprawl and the like as a concern - What made you change your mind?
Actually, I don't have any problem with karate or any of those other places downtown. I just found it funny how this guy seemed to be describing downtown Ann Arbor. And even though I actually hate tattoos, I think it's cool Ann Arbor has a downtown tattoo den. It's already been said better by Murph and Grr, but it's homogeneity that sucks.
I think what has helped me become more attuned to McSprawl as a problem is threefold: 1) Living in a boring McCity for nearly 7 years; 2) Realizing that the McCity virus is spreading rapidly as junk houses and strip malls take over even older towns and neighborhoods; and 3) That stupid government policies are more of a culprit than the market.
Picked up yet another interesting-looking book, "Global City Blues" by Daniel Solomon, one of the founders of New Urbanism, which seeks "to reconfigure our daily world so that it is more like the places we seek out when we have the chance, and less like the places that we know deep in our genes do not satisfy everything we long for."
Murph, have you read this one?
That sprawl is a product of regulations that prevent anything else is gaining popularity - in academia. My advisor Jonathan Levine just had his book published this past fall, "Zoned Out", discussing the ways that zoning limits behavior, and, in particular, how it prevents us from creating the places we say we want.
In practice, though, it's harder. Try going before your citizens and saying, "Okay, so, you know that zoning thing that you've been relying on for your entire lives? We're going to throw it out." You'd get a chair to the face in no time...
Nobody's yet been able to sell the idea effectively that these regulations are causing the behaviors we dislike. Look at A2: lots of people want to live here, but the city has allowed only minimal growth in the past decades. So we get massive subdivisions around the city - and people think the problem is that our land use controls aren't restrictive _enough_, and that the solution is to throw an $87 million bond at buying development rights, while making no changes to the fact that people want to live in the city but can't.
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