Adrian Riskin 
RE: https://urbanists.social/@Streetsweeper/116341614455296369
Zoning laws do function like this -- they increase car dependence. But that's not all they do. Laws are tools, and tools only very rarely have just one capability. Tools created to solve one problem are often repurposed to solve many others. For instance, hammers were invented hundreds of thousands of years before nails, but now driving nails is a common use of hammers.
Laws are different from hammers in at least one important sense. Almost everyone who has a problem that a hammer can solve has access to hammers and the ability to use them. Laws, on the other hand, can only be created and can only be used by a very small group of people -- the ruling class. [1]
So as in this article, the ruling class uses zoning to increase car dependence because they make money from it in a variety of ways -- car sales, gasoline sales, oil, etc. But car dependence serves other purposes -- it makes people easier to track, to control, etc
And increasing car dependence is not the only ruling class solution provided by zoning. Zoning laws prevent people from running businesses out of their homes, increasing the likelihood that they'll have to work for wages -- without wage laborers capitalism would collapse. Zoning laws also prevent tenants from sharing rentals to the full extent possible, so more rental units get rented. Without a steady supply of tenants the landlord business -- quintessential capitalism -- would collapse.
Zoning laws also allow local governments to take houses away from their putative owners -- can't afford to fix your fences, keep your lawn mowed, keep your house painted, etc, and the city will fine you until you comply. Can't afford to pay? They'll take your house. Eventually it gets sold to someone else and both the city and your mortgage holder make money.
I'm sure that many of these uses weren't foreseeable when modern zoning was invented, but as I said, tools are continually repurposed to solve new problems. Since effectively only the ruling class is able to create laws and to use them effectively they get repurposed for their benefit.
Attributing purposes to tools rather than to those who wield them is a common fallacy, and it leads to serious analytic errors. When people say that the purpose e.g. of police is to protect people and that we just need to get them back to this original use -- in other words advocating for reform -- they're falling into this trap. Look at the capabilities of police, remember that those capabilities can be directed in many ways and only the ruling class is able to decide how the police are used, and it becomes clear that reform is a pipe dream.
#Zoning #ZoningLaws #ACAB #Abolition #Tools #ToolTheory #Capitalism #WageLabor #Landlords
[1] Sometimes people who aren't in the ruling class manage to use laws to their advantage, but these are edge cases. Not only that, but the very possibility of non-rulers using laws serves as one of capitalism's many safety valves. When it does happen it relieves pressure from below and capitalism lives another day. Such cases are also examples of the ruling class using the laws
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