Suburb Socialism

Chapter II: Zoning & Land Use

Hello once again comrades, we’re back with the second chapter on how the suburbs could be transformed into hotbeds of ecosocialist organization and progress. In the first article in this series, I talked about the difficulties of organizing in the burbs as a consequence of personal car culture. Today I want to take a look into another challenge and how we, as socialists, can overcome them. And it may not be a flashy solution, but this sort of thing is just as major a roadblock to progress as gerrymandering and first-past-the-post elections are to representative democracy; those issues were ignored for far too long at our own peril, and we cannot make that same mistake again. So buckle up, compatriots- Today we’re gonna explore modern zoning and land use laws!

Just like in Chapter I of this series, I did a quick dive into one aspect of modern suburban life- parking. Today, I want to do the same thing, but with a second scourge of the ‘burbs: lawns.

“What’s the problem? Grass is a plant! It sequesters carbon!”

You can very quickly get a sense of how much concrete harm personal lawns cause to our environment and our society- and how much potential concrete good they could do if we replaced them with something else.

I’ve previously argued that we must end Personal Car Culture as we push for a massive expansion of public mass transit; today, I make the case that we must abandon Personal Lawn Culture as another condition of turning the ‘burbs into an engine of ecosocialism. And with that comes a lot of other necessities- as we abandon the idea that everyone needs a lawn, we should also abandon the idea that everyone needs an individual plot of horizontal land.

Note, I did not say abandoning the idea of personal property; people have a right to a home all their own, obviously, and to suggest otherwise would be monstrous. But if our idea of home ownership were more vertical than horizontal, we would open up untold space that could be devoted towards better ecosocialist use- hyperlocal regenerative agriculture, natural reclamation, public green spaces and parks, no-mow/no-spray pollinator fields, and re/afforestry efforts. And for better or worse, the pathway to accomplishing these things is through winning as many seats as we can in local and state government.

Though I recognize that a fair portion of my readers here may not believe in electoralism, this isn’t something that can be won through direct action. Unless zoning laws are changed by city councils, we won’t be able to build the sorts of mixed-use structures we need. Without friendly commissioners, building permits may be given out to greedy gentrifiers instead of affordable public housing developments. Without competent city planners and heads of Departments of Transportation, our transit options will remain a patchwork mess of mismatched nonsense, bolted together like some sort of Frankenstein’s Monster of buses and trams. You get the idea.

We need a full-scale takeover of public offices in the suburbs. Even if one given office isn’t directly empowered to assist in building the ecosocialist vision laid out above, every socialist in office normalizes every other socialist running, which makes victory easier to achieve. Once in office, we must swiftly work with experts to halt the outward expansion of the suburbs, and develop the sorts of next-generation vertical ‘burb described above as quickly as we can. And while all that is taking place, those of us remaining in private life can work to establish community gardens, public parks, and pollinator gardens with our comrades. We can lobby against gentrifiers. We can fight against golf courses (who are enormous wastes of space and resources).

Man, I always feel like these things are both too long and too short. Oh well. Thanks again for reading.

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