But replace cute cafe in your example with a landfill or a cement plant and see if it's still awesome.

This is why some zoning is good.

yes you would, if it were a large plastics manufacturer bringing large amounts of truck traffic and noise pollution and spewing carcinogenic PCB compounds into local atmosphere.

Gigantic factories don’t want to be on small residential streets anyway because they cant fit the trucks in, so I think that argument cuts the other way - there are natural forces that deter that stuff.

Make no mistake, the protection is more often than not for the local tax base. There more than enough examples of zoning changes approved because the change offers a multiple of new tax revenue.

if you're saying, "I was just arguing that one exact example, i didnt say natural forces help for all kinds of other problems that commercial zoning is meant to help", well OK, so I think commercial zoning is necessary for even a less-than-gigantic, but nevertheless distruptive, noisy, and polluting manufacturing facilities being built inappropriately close to schools and residential areas which may nevertheless still be on roads that are fairly or fully accessible by truck traffic". After all the truck traffic could enter in the front of the building's property and the back and sides of the building's property abut said schools and homes in any case. just go look at any commercial property with a lot of trucking and movement going on, it doesn't take much imagination to see how such a thing can and quite often does abut residential areas in any case.

Yeah, I was trying to say that factories specifically want good road access, so zones aren't necessary for that one exact example - your second paragraph. Sorry for being unclear with the phrase "that stuff," which seems to have sent us in the wrong direction.

You say they may be constructed in residential areas anyway - like, maybe the roads are good enough in a neighborhood. I agree with this, but then I'm not seeing what the problem with the factory is. If it's noisy, impose noise restrictions. If it's polluting, impose pollution restrictions. But I don't have any beef with people making stuff as a matter of course.

My position is mostly that zones are the wrong tool for the job. I wish we were more forgiving of mixed-use neighborhoods. If someone wants to run a 3D printing shop next door to a school, more power to 'em.

of course we don't want anything carcinogenic or that dangerous anywhere where people live.

that doesn't invalidate GP's main point that schools need safe and calm environments.

Zoning shouldn't be able to limit how high containers are stacked. If the facility operates in a safe way consistent with OHSA laws, the municipality should come in with a half baked zoning law that prohibits an otherwise reasonable operation from working effectively.

In my travels I have found that many communities across the US seem to generally fear use of height. I've always found this odd compared to rest of the world. Maybe it's just because land is cheap, but it does tend to mean that zoning laws, which try to codify standard practice, do end up overreaching on this particular issue.

A factory isn't just "making things", though. There might be semi's coming and going making traffic more dangerous, there could be materials left out that are dangerous to kids if they wander through the wrong fence, maybe there'll be loud noises that are detrimental to kids' concentration during tests.

There's plenty of reasons industry is usually put outside of towns.

They also need heavy transport, which wears out road infrastructure much more quickly than light vehicles. Keeping residential streets largely clear of heavy traffic means you can focus repairs and replacements of road surfaces in the industrial areas.

Zoning isnt the only way to solve these problems, but it's a good one

But "zoning" attempts to resolve those issues by carving territory up, not by requiring a particular physical distance. Zoning maps have boundaries which still have the problems you describe, right?

It seems a lot more reasonable to target the specific issues (noise, air pollution, etc - the stuff you descibed) rather than attack this via zones.

Of course, you said a similar thing too, so we probably 80% agree. But can you explain the remaining 20% - when is zoning ever a good way to solve these problems?

Further - is there a case to be made for zoning aside from moving really heavy industry away from really residential neighborhoods? My city has dozens of zones, carefully segregating walkable retail regions from single-family homes, which doesn't seem so defensible.

There are alternative mechanisms for getting peoples' local preferences. City- or county-wide zoning maps rarely change, and - at least in Seattle - don't seem to respond to individual citizens desires or concerns in the way you imply. Are zones really the right tool for the job?

Instead, we have zoning, where we can say "build your factory here if you don't want to worry about residential complaints" or "build your house here if you don't want a noxious odor, noise, and constant semi traffic bothering you."

If you think that there are situations where preventing some kinds of things (say, a toxic landfill) from being constructed next to other kinds of things (say, a preschool) is desirable, and that there should be rules around that, and that most people want an elected government to make and enforce those rules, that ought to explain why the commenter you responded to said zoning is important. Even if you disagree with any of those clauses, I think you'd understand why they felt that way.