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Two goats versus a suburban nation


One of the Arlington Two

Zoning came about in the early 20th Century with a fairly limited objective – to reign in the industrial nuisances that were making life in cities of the day unbearable. It all started in 1916 when New York began regulating the shape of skyscrapers, and things really took off ten years later when the US Supreme Court upheld Euclid, Ohio’s use-segregating code. Once the precedent was set, zoning began to get a whole lot more restrictive. Over the ensuing decades as suburban life took hold, alternatives were gradually zoned out of American cities. Read the zoning code from any random town and odds are there are large swaths of that town where the Beaver Cleaver lifestyle is literally the only one permitted by law.

Sometime in the 1980s a backlash against such exclusionary zoning began, and under the names New Urbanism and Smart Growth that backlash has been gaining strength ever since. Progressive localities around the country have been re-writing rules left and right in an attempt to level a playing field that for years was more like a cliff face than a slope.

For the most part that battle has been fought to make urban legal again in a suburban world. Little thought or effort have gone into the question of where rural belongs in the equation, except to the extent that, y’know, rural areas shouldn’t be encroached upon by sprawl.

Suddenly though, Arlington, one of America’s most progressive rule re-writing places, is being faced with a decidedly rural problem. In April a homeowner in a suburban neighborhood near Ballston bought a couple of goats. Yeah, goats. The idea was the goats would keep the grass trim, provide fertilizer, and would be friendly family pets. Problem is, zoning in their neighborhood doesn’t allow “livestock” within 100 feet of the street, and goats count as livestock. The county says the goats have to go.

The homeowners are appealing, but they’re just one case. Similar restrictions are in most zoning ordinances, and have been for a long time. For several decades it’s simply been an assumption that farm animals don’t belong in quiet suburban subdivisions.

But if that’s the case, maybe it’s time to question such assumptions. What’s so bad about livestock? Just what exactly are we trying to accomplish by making ownership of such animals illegal? What makes a fenced-in goat more insufferable than a barking dog? If goats are quieter and less smelly than a gas mower, why is the former banned and the latter allowed? Horses are less noxious than motorcycles, and chickens less troublesome than an early rising neighbor with a woodworking hobby and a power saw. If noise and smell are the issues, why the loopholes for dogs, gas mowers and motorcycles? If noise and smell aren’t at issue, what is?

The answer is identity. Animals aren’t permitted even though loud, smelly motors are in many places around the country because at some point in their history a lot of places around the country decided they wanted an exclusive suburban character, and some things don’t fit that character no matter how inoffensive they are on their own terms.

But as the price of gas makes our suburban habit more and more difficult to sustain, alternatives are going to pop up with increasing regularity. Some of them will be technically illegal within the framework of our existing suburban laws, but does that mean they should be dismissed, or should the laws be changed? As time goes by jurisdictions around the country are going to be faced with the difficult question of just what character their communities should take, and we as a society are going to have to make tough decisions about just which values are really non-negotiable.

BeyondDC doesn’t necessarily have the answer. We wouldn’t mind if a neighbor owned a few goats, but then the prospect of living in a detached house neighborhood doesn’t appeal to us in the first place, so we’re not worried about protecting that lifestyle. What do readers think?

June 2nd, 2008 | Permalink
Tags: law



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