This was done pretty much the entire history of civilization. Communist revolutions tried to ignore the human nature that leads to it and we all know how that turned out.
Your position is that the state should use central planning to determine which kinds of economic activity are allowed on which parcels and then restrict property rights accordingly. The call is coming from inside the house.
* Note that the way we are using this word is pretty vague and may be contributing extra crosstalk
Yeah, it's an awful term, because it refers to hundred-year-old densely-populated urbanized areas that directly abut core cities whose borders were artificially locked into place in the 19th Century, and to greenfield interstate-offramp developments, and just about everything in between.
But, just to address your "way on the other side" scenario: forbidding zoning is exactly what the state should do. You don't get to have democracy for core rights. It doesn't matter if everybody in the neighborhood votes to restrict property rights. They're not up to a vote, just like you can't vote to restrict freedom of speech. It's not subject to a vote.
The right to build housing on my own private property is very clearly, in my view, protected by the U.S. Constitution and restricting that right is plainly a taking. I don't care what Euclid says. It was wrongly decided.
Rich people and poor people alike live in cities. It is basically insane to separate them physically and declare them independent. You can't define away the problems of urbanization through economic segregation.
I mean, it would be one thing to enforce physical separation while still acknowledging that both halves are part of the same city (and the same tax base), but to go so far as to say, "no, we're actually not even part of the city, despite all commonsense physical reality; we're actually just a whole separate thing over here" is really an awe-inspiring level of audacity and chutzpah.