The neighborhood I live in has six-ten unit apartments on the same streets as six-to-ten bedroom mansions. In some places, you can see where the owner of the mansion had an apartment building constructed in their front yard.

I could never imagine this happening today. Yet everyone in the region knows of this neighborhood as being prestigious, with the best schools in the state, huge sidewalks that are packed with people, and a nice little downtown with a coffee shop, dairy whip, a public library branch, and some restaurants.

People have no problem recognizing what a great neighborhood looks like. But for some reason, local politicians can't seem to enact zoning laws that allow them to be built in modern times.