Why Massachusetts Might Sue Its Cities Over Zoning Codes

In 2021, Massachusetts signed a law requiring communities that are served by the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) to legalize multifamily housing development near MBTA transit stations. Recently, a state court ruled that the state has the authority to sue cities and towns that don’t comply.

In this episode of Upzoned, Abby and Chuck discuss whether that’s a good idea, the broader trend of states intervening in city zoning practices, and how the root issue is actually poor transportation investment practices.

• Click here for a computer-generated transcript.

  Abby Newsham 0:04

  This is Abby, and you are listening to up zoned.

  Abby Newsham 0:18

  Hey, everyone, thanks for listening to another episode of up zoned, a show where we take a big story from the news each week that touches the strong towns conversation, and we up zone it. We talk about it in depth. I'm Abby Newsham, a planner in Kansas City, and today I'm joined once again, by my friend Chuck Marone. Hello, welcome. Hey, Abby.

  Chuck Marohn 0:40

  It's so nice to see you. It's great to see you too. We're making a habit of this. What's that I said? We're gonna make a habit of this. This year, you and me,

  Abby Newsham 0:50

  we are going to make a habit of this this year. No words traveling, although next week, you're going to be briefly in Kansas City, and we will miss each other, which is a bummer.

  Chuck Marohn 1:02

  I am landing in and driving out of Kansas City and then driving back in and flying out, but I will be in city, non airport property, as long, you know, for maybe like half an hour each way.

  Abby Newsham 1:17

  So yeah, time to record up sound. I

  Chuck Marohn 1:20

  feel I feel bad. I hope to get there this year. I didn't make it last year, which I think that's the first year in a long time I've not been to Kansas City. So you and I are overdue for some some Kansas City fun time together.

  Abby Newsham 1:35

  Yeah, definitely. I think between myself and some others in Kansas City, we can figure out how to make a trip happen. Yeah,

  Chuck Marohn 1:44

  well, we got to go back to the World War One Museum. It was so much fun,

  Abby Newsham 1:48

  absolutely. They might hire you.

  Chuck Marohn 1:51

  Well, this one will come out. Yeah, maybe I can get a job there. This, this will come out after. We're recording it before the weekend. But your Kansas City Chiefs, have a big game coming up this weekend. Are you? You're back to ball mania in Kansas City.

  Abby Newsham 2:07

  It is football mania in Kansas City, yes, and we are playing the bills on Sunday, which is a big competitor of ours. Shout out to Bernice Radel from Buffalo. We've got, you know, a friendly, friendly competition going on with our two teams. So I

  Chuck Marohn 2:27

  have to admit to you, I don't have animus towards Kansas City Chiefs. I know other people do, because they like, you know, when you decide to create a dynasty of things, people are like, yeah, knock them down, like all that. I don't have that sense. I don't have that towards them. I mean, if this were the Cowboys or, like the eagles that were winning, like, I would be very upset. I don't mind the chiefs, but I do like buffalo. Like, I hope buffalo wins. No, yeah. I mean, okay, Minnesota and buffalo are the only teams that have been to the Super Bowl four times without a win. Minnesota has never won a Super Bowl. Buffalo has never won a Super Bowl. And, you know, I, I have a soft spot for Buffalo, just in general as a city. And so I would, you know, I'd like to see them us cold weather places have to stick together, and I don't know, I'd like to see them get a shot as well again, but

  Abby Newsham 3:28

  Well, well, okay, I can respect that. And may the best team win,

  Chuck Marohn 3:33

  the best team win, and I won't be mad either way. It's not like a huge, I don't have a huge, you know, stake in this.

  Abby Newsham 3:40

  So yeah, well, me too. I'm not, it's not. I'm not betting any money on it. So okay, well, today we've got a pretty fascinating article that I'm excited to talk with you about. This was published in streets blog and written by Christian Milne, and the headline reads, court ruling paves the way for state to sue towns with exclusionary zoning laws. So a recent ruling from the Commonwealth Supreme Court, Judicial Court has affirmed that the state of Massachusetts has the authority to sue its cities and towns that hold exclusionary zoning laws near transit stations. The state has something called the MBTA communities law that was signed in 2021 and establishes requirements for municipalities to legalize zoning for multi family development near their MBTA transit stations. So many cities have already taken steps to reform their zoning laws since the signing of that law, but a handful have not. And in terms of carrots and sticks, this is a new stick and Massachusetts toolbox to basically force those cities and towns. To do something about their zoning in these locations. I think this is interesting because it's, you know, it's a court case around the topic of zoning that is establishing some level of precedent and absolutely connecting transit and transportation with development and housing, and it's yet another example of states stepping in on the issue of zoning, which is something that is obviously a growing trend these days. There's so

  Chuck Marohn 5:31

  many things in this article that I want to talk about. There's so many things about this I want to talk about. I i downloaded the ruling and read it too, and it is, it is maybe less, less clear than the article states. I just want to get, like a pet peeve out about this article. First. You know, this is streets blog, and streets blog has a audience they're writing to and a way of writing. I always like the first paragraph. You know, the Commonwealth Court affirms the state governments has clear authority to sue cities and towns that insist on preserving segregation as zoning laws. And I'm just like, why the hyperbolic language? I mean, it makes this, this is a, this is a nuanced ruling on a nuanced issue with a lot of, like, deep complexities. And I just hate when, like, people who write about this stuff, you know, is there a racial element to this? Yes, is zoning like the same as poll taxes and separate bathrooms and sit in the back of the bus and Jim Crow laws? I mean, I get where there is an overlap here, but you make something so kind of coated in a certain way and inaccessible to people. This whole beef is over the Town of Milton. And I don't know the Town of Milton real well. I know it like a tiny bit, and I've spent some time here on Google Maps checking out their different transit stops too, as part of this, I think a lot of people in Milton could be not racist, and actually think that these I you know, the zoning in the way that they're doing it is not a bad idea. So I feel like there is a kind of rational way to have this conversation. And I feel bad that, like, the hyperbolic nature of this article kind of makes it a little bit inaccessible to people who should be having this conversation. Let me give like the one thing that I think is the big issue here, and then let's take it where you want to Abby, this is an example, and there are many, many, many, many of these examples across North America where transportation dollars gets out in front of land use decisions. We want to train. There's government money for it. There's federal government money for a train. They'll pay 90 cents on the dollar for it. Let's go out and build it and let's get it run through these neighborhoods. And oh my gosh, we want to get local support. So let's put in four transit stops in the Town of Milton, because then their legislators will support it, and their council will support it, and we get them to sign the document saying we're all partners in this, and we're all happy. And it's a big, big rush to get the transportation built. And then you look at it after the fact, and you say, Oh, we built this now, like we should do something with it, like we actually need ridership, and we need participation, and this can't be a park and ride, and it can't serve a bunch of single family homes, and we need to actually build stuff. And then you layer on top of that, these kind of urgent needs we have regarding housing in especially in this part of the world where the problems are very acute and and you're like, we there's a I was gonna say something. I'll say it. There's a John Mulaney bit where he talks about the the old saying of, you know, Why marry the cow when you get the milk for free. And it's a funny bit, but I feel like there's a there's a certain thing here. Like, why go along with this when you get the transit already? Like, why we're doing this backward? We're, in a sense, giving the transit at very like, low cost locally, we basically have gifted, you know, through the funding paradigms, all this stuff, with very little local responsibility to make this work. You know, beyond Yeah, we agree to the funding scenario you've gotten. We're a partner. Rah, rah. And so then we're frustrated after the fact, when there's no development plan that would actually justify or make this trans this massive transit investment, work. This is not uncommon. This is not Massachusetts. This is literally everywhere. I was in Salt Lake City a couple months ago, and, like, I'm riding their transit line, and it's park and ride, park and ride, park and ride. And then, like, you know, why are we making a billion dollar investment? We've done the same thing in Minnesota. I was in Sacramento A while back, and they brought me out to their transits, you know. So we're, we're trying to get this redeveloped, and I'm thinking, this is a new line, and they're like, oh, no, it's been here two decades. We've done this everywhere, but that's like the root problem here we're trying to overcome, right?

  Abby Newsham 10:19

  Yeah, that's, that's a really interesting point, because I've worked on a handful of transit oriented development planning projects, and for the most part, the planning part, like the land use planning, the station area planning, piece of of this, the overall project, is coming after the capital investment in the transit facility, which, when you think about it, it does seem a little bit silly. I wonder if it just happens to be where the money is coming from, that that pots are not combined into something more comprehensive. The only place where it's ever been the planning before the actual investment has been when I worked in Phoenix for the South Central Corridor line, where they had not built out that facility yet, but it was in the planning stages. But it doesn't seem like that is the typical way that they approach how you deal with land use along transit. And by the way, I, I'm, I have Google Maps pulled up. I'm looking at Milton, Massachusetts, and the transit system that runs through it. It this is really interesting, because it looks like the the rail just runs basically alongside the border of the city, and there's like three stops within the city. I think three and two of them are kind of like mid block, almost in very strange locations where, like, I mean one of them, it's kind of surprising that it's even accessible. It's like squeezed between two single family houses is like a path to get to the transit station. So I'd love to learn more about the story behind how this facility was planned, and like the land use debates that are happening there, because it does seem kind of odd. So it's no surprise to me that that this is an area of contention, not to say that they shouldn't be planning for the land use to evolve in this city around these transit stations. But, yeah, it's a very nuanced conversation, right?

  Chuck Marohn 12:35

  Well, let's talk about the planning, because I feel like there is the work of planners, which you know, you and I both have a planning background. We go in and we even, in a best case scenario, say, all right, within six blocks of this transit site where we're going to put in a new stop, we need to have the neighborhood be ultra walkable. We need to allow a lot higher density to justify this. We need to, you know, bam, bam, bam. And we talk about all these, all these things that need to happen. If that had been done, and it might have been done in Milton, I don't know. I suspect not. But like, let's say that it had been done, there still is no kind of mechanism for it to occur. A lot of times, transit advocates in this country will point to places like Japan, and they'll say, Well, Japan has built this state of the art high speed rail system. They do this fantastic job of building out the system. Why can't we be more like Japan? And I'm like, well, we easily could be in Japan. If you're going to put in a transit stop, they will go and acquire all the land around it before they put it in, and then they will put it in, and then they will sell the land at Post Development values, which are much, much higher. And no one's going to buy the land at those high, elevated values unless they plan to build something around it. And so the transit doesn't become like this. Hey, we're putting in a transit line. Why don't you, local government like develop something around it, it becomes a direct mechanism to fund the line. Here in the US, if you want a transit line, you go to the federal government, you make an application, you get it essentially gifted to you with very little local obligation or even local incentive to make it work. I think that if you wanted the land use to come out of this. Yes, you should have done upfront planning, but in a US perspective, you should have assessed people for the stop. You should have said we're putting a transit stop two blocks from your house that raises your home value by a quarter million dollars, or half a million dollars, we're going to assess you for that cost like that is actually going to go on your taxes, and you're going to pay that over the next 20 years. And what would have happened is one of two things, either a bunch of local people would have said, we don't want a transit stop, which really is a fine alternative, right? Because spend that money somewhere else. Where people do want it, or they would have said, wow, half a million dollars, or 200,000 or whatever the assessment would have been, I need to sell my house, because I can't, like, stay here at a single family home when I've got that big of an assessment here, someone else is going to need to buy this, pay it off, and then they're going to redevelop it. We don't want to have that conversation. We don't want to do that. What we want is we want to give out transportation dollars at at will, to kind of loosely direct land use, and now seemingly, we want to go to court and fight between governments over implementing policies that we're never, kind of agreed on ahead of time, or or, or loosely agreed on ahead of time, or, let me say, encouraged. And now we're getting a little more stringent in our encouragement that I'm not doubting anybody's intentions here, and it's kind of why I started with the whole thing of streets blog. You know, I think inferring intentions on everybody. I don't think that's healthy. I think what we've done here is we've just given them, you know, we're giving them the milk without requiring them to buy the cow. And why would you ever buy the cow? I mean, I like, I get it,

  Abby Newsham 16:15

  yeah, to me, it seems like probably more of a miscalculation due to like silos in the planning world and in approaches that are not comprehensive enough. And I'd really like to better understand how those decisions get made to actually, you know, build a transit stop when they're actually planning out these facilities, because it doesn't seem like there's a strong connection to the future land use policy that then later comes in, you know, subsequently,

  Chuck Marohn 16:52

  not as, I mean, not a strong connection. There's, there's, yeah, weakest connections.

  Abby Newsham 16:59

  So, so I wonder, like, how those decisions are being made. Because the thing is, is that transit is both a major capital and operational expense that taxpayers are paying for, and in my perspective, investment, probably the private sector to build full service communities along these corridors is crucial if you're going to have this as a service in your community, and that's not just from like a social perspective, but also like a value capture return on investment perspective, economically robust corridors can support transit and areas that don't have that cannot support transit, both in terms of ridership and if you're going to have some kind of value capture strategy to run the operations, the actual operational budget for it. So I think about the Kansas City streetcar approach to funding, which we've, I think, talked about on this show before, where they they took the assessment model, where they assess that transit corridor to pay for the the operations. And that's a really smart approach, because the vitality of development and and taxes along that corridor are directly connected to the sustainability of that transit investment, which is, I think, a really important way of of tying land use and transportation systems in a really real way, as real as financial is. Well,

  Chuck Marohn 18:38

  let's be, let's be very, very clear we're talking about transit right now, because that's what this law is about, and that's what this is the kind of, the fulcrum of this lawsuit. But this is all transportation spending. I mean, this is, this is what happens with highways all the time, right? We go in and we build the interchange, and we essentially gift some, you know, farmer, who probably is already at this point, sold to a land speculator. We, we give some land speculator tons of money in order to, you know, acquiesce to Walmart and McDonald's and all the other big boxes that are going to be at that interchange. Those things should be assessed as well. There should be a local price. And what you see in a place like Kansas City, where you, you did, I'm vaguely familiar with the Kansas City thing, but you know, when you have things that are funded locally, the urgency to get a return on that investment is a lot greater. And I know that there's, there was a higher proportion in that Kansas City project. It is it. I think it's important for people to understand. I You said, you know, there should be a stronger connection between the transportation and the land use planning. I think that the thing that drives us more than anything else is the funding, right you have. These projects are delivered as transportation projects, and I think it's fair. Say as political slash transportation projects right like they flow through the political system to the transportation people who go out and build transportation, and they may put in their applications ridership projections based on the assumption that redevelopment will happen, but there's no like mechanism to force that redevelopment to happen, let alone, you know, let alone plan for it ahead of time, let alone write the rules and regulations ahead of time, let alone put the financial incentives in place or disincentives in place to not redevelop it. None of that exists. And I think it's important for people who support more transportation spending to recognize that this is not, I think, something we fix with better planning. And this is not something we fix with, you know, these projects, people want to have them happen. That's why they occur. I really want to train here. I really want to interchange here. I really want a highway here. We really want this. And so the political system we have makes that happen with really no regard to what would be needed financially on the ground to make that viable, let alone what changes on the ground would need to happen to make to create those finances. This is why we built so much transportation that we can't maintain

  Abby Newsham 21:30

  Well, exactly, because, you know, we don't do ribbon cuttings or have big headlines for well maintained infrastructure. It's all capital expenses. That's that's how you get the gold star. And so you said, it's not really about planning, but I think in a way, it's more about like actual cohesion, cohesion and coordination between all of these different elements, and bringing the financing into these discussions in terms of long term operations and sustainability, because when someone is maybe charged to build out a transit system, that's money out. And I'm sure operational funding is a part of that. But thinking about, you know, revenue capture taxes that are being generated along these corridors. Is that even really part of the discussion, is there any kind of return on investment, dialog or framework that looks at Money in money out along these corridors for these projects. I highly doubt that that's really part of the conversation comprehensively.

  Chuck Marohn 22:47

  Well, we, we have set it up. I really don't think it's any more complicated than we allocate money to transit. We then, you know, have a grant process where we give out, you know, based on your application, money here and there, there's political influence on that. But, I mean, even if it weren't, we allocate that out as a grant because we want to get more transit built. I think that this, in its best form, does what it's intended to do, which is build a lot more transit. I think what, what this, what this in has, at its fatal flaw, at the like, the foundation of it is the idea that transit is a good in and of itself. Transit is only a good. And I would say, you know, auto, transportation is this way too, although to a lesser extent. But transit, for sure, is only a good when it is connected to a land use pattern that it accelerates. There has to be an interplay between the two, where transit makes the land use more valuable and more mature and more intense and more intense and more mature land use actually supports and sustains that transit investment. And when you disconnect those two sure, you might be gifting someone transit because, you know, hey, it's, it's less carbon than driving, and we really like transit and poor people and like, you know, use your justification for spending money on transit. I think we do a massive disservice to transit as a concept, to cities that actually get it to our overall dialog and to transportation in general, when we don't do these things together in a way where the land use actually leads and justifies the subsequent transit investment. When we put those in reverse order, we get this type of infighting that, you know, you can cheer this court ruling and say, Hey, we got to force the city of Milton, or the Town of Milton, to do A, B and C. And maybe we do. I'm not even, I mean, we haven't even talked about that yet, but. You're you're having the wrong debate because you picked the wrong you did things in backward order.

  Abby Newsham 25:09

  Hmm, can we talk a little bit about zoning and housing and affordable housing? Because that's another kind of pet peeve I have not just with this article, but there's a growing, I think, political dialog out there that that changing zoning will equal like more affordable housing. And I I think making something legal doesn't ultimately make something affordable. I think rezoning reform is definitely part it's something that needs to be addressed, and is really, really important. It can help with affordability, and it's a big part of the solution. But I just think when people talk about it as like an affordable housing strategy for transit, there's a lot more to that puzzle than just zoning, maybe just that's a pet peeve of mine, but it's like that that seems to be a growing narrative that if we just fix the zoning, then we'll have all of this affordable housing along transit centers and corridors to support people who need affordable housing.

  Chuck Marohn 26:23

  Last year, you and I had a guest on up zoned, and I'm sorry that I forget his name. He was so good, and I've gone back and read his stuff since, the guy who talked about the number of the number of companies out there that are building the five over ones and the apartments. Do you remember who that guest was? I can't remember his name.

  Abby Newsham 26:45

  Yes, his name will come to me. Coby Lefkowitz.

  Chuck Marohn 26:49

  That's right. He was so good, so good. Viewers should go back and listen that episode, because it was really, really good. Yeah, the big takeaway from his from the dialog that we had with him and from subsequently, like stuff that he's written and that I've seen, you know, you have around a couple dozen companies across the United States that are building the type of development intensity that you're trying to get around these transit stops. You know, I'm looking at the one here in Milton at Ashmont. And, you know, for blocks and blocks and blocks around this, you've got a single, single family home neighborhood. Now there, it's a thicker neighborhood than like you would see in my hometown of Brainerd, for example. You know, this is pretty mature, but you don't have any real intense development here. This is pretty much single family homes, as far as you're going to walk if you want to get, in a sense, radical redevelopment, or you want to get a lot of housing really quickly. I think a lot of people look at this and they say, well, to make this affordable, we need one of these two dozen companies to come here, buy up, you know, and assemble a bunch of properties, tear them down, and then build a bigger apartment complex, a six story, you know, a five over one type building. And that will get us, you know, the density that we need and the affordability that we need, and all of that nowhere is that occurring in a way that substantively has changed housing prices? And, you know, I wrote a whole book with Daniel, my my colleague. I wrote an entire book about why there's a feedback loop and COVID, kind of like, pointed this out too. There's a feedback loop where that style of development, the financing of it, in a sense, depends on rising prices. In other words, if prices are rising, a lot of liquidity comes into that market, and you can build but as soon as prices start to slow down their rise, let alone start to level off and fall, the liquidity starts to pull back, and it's like, well, we're not as interested in investing in that right now. Let's wait till the market starts rising again. And so there's, in a sense, like a feedback loop that ensures that prices are going to go up, that things will never be truly affordable, that you can't, in a sense, build your way into affordable prices with that style of development. I'm looking at this neighborhood, and if you said the goal, let's ignore the transit stop for a second, but the goal is, let's build affordable housing. What we need to do is we need to make sure that every one of those single family homes is able to and will over the next couple decades, evolve into a duplex at a backyard cottage, add another unit in the backyard, in a sense, like thicken up so that you've got double, triple the amount of density in this neighborhood in a couple decades. That can be done at scale. It can be done very rapidly. It can be done in a way that is more locally price sensitive. Uh. Um, and has less kind of sensitivity to like macro capital. But that's not you know that is a different style of development, and that doesn't necessarily solve your transit problem. You know that that doesn't immediately address this dysfunction you've created around land use at the transit site, so I don't know. I feel like what we've created, and this is why I said this is a very like nuanced and complicated issue. Is we've created this kind of flash point where, if I live in the neighborhood and you're telling me, I have to do X, because X will create affordable housing, it's obvious and clear to me that x will not create affordable housing. If you're the transit people, and you're like, you need to do X, because X is what's going to support the transit system. Well, it's clear to me that, like, we probably won't build an I mean, we're not going to build enough here to actually support the transit system. So that seems silly. So I'm on the ground going like, I don't you know you want me to do this. I don't really know what difference it will make, but I'm sure I'm not happy about it. And then you've got people outside of it looking saying, like, we've got to do something. You guys are refusing to do your share and do your part. This just creates, like, all the ground for like, deep, deep dysfunction, and I'm going to trace it all back to a transportation investment that was premature and shouldn't have happened.

  Abby Newsham 31:26

  Yeah, I really sorry. That's my dog

  Chuck Marohn 31:30

  happy time the

  Abby Newsham 31:31

  mail is here.

  Chuck Marohn 31:32

  Oh, yeah, well, that's time for celebration,

  Abby Newsham 31:35

  yeah. And, you know, apologies for my ignorance on like the story behind how this transit system was built out. I'm sure somebody knows more about it, but just looking at Google Maps, looking at this line that goes through this neighborhood, it it's hard to it's hard to even perceive that, you know, whoever planned this transit route and these stops had the vision that in the future, there would be a completely different development pattern along this corridor. You know, one side of it is, is this single family neighborhood that doesn't have a walkable block structure. It's it's somewhat compact, but it's very much like in the woods, and has a lot of winding roads. It doesn't look like there's that many people that are within walking distance of any of these stops. And the other side of this transit corridor line is like a creek and a forest, and there's a little bit of connectivity on the other side of that, but not, not substantial, not super close to these stops. So it's hard to believe that there was some kind of vision that this area would drastically change. And if it is to drastically change, it would require a substantial amount of of, you know, land acquisition consolidation, to do the type of housing that would that, that, I guess, is envisioned of these, these zoning reform measures. So, yeah, to me, just a lot of things are not really making sense at certain points of this corridor for this particular city, and I'd like to learn more about it. There's

  Chuck Marohn 33:33

  some, I mean, I'm looking through some of these neighborhoods, by US standards. These are beautiful neighborhoods, and there's a lot of what, you know, people would call missing middle housing. There's a lot of it here, a lot of small apartment buildings, a lot of, you know, clear like multi family units that probably have six, eight units in them. This is a really beautiful, beautiful neighborhood, and you can see that it is thickening up. You know that? Mean, there's, there is a lot of stuff being added here. But, you know, I Yeah, can we talk a little bit about the root the court ruling itself? Yes, I feel like there's so when you have squabbles between the state and cities. I read this article, and it's like, hey, this paves the way for the state, you know, the good guy to, you know, ride in on the white horse and sue the evil segregationist local town people. We have very, you know, clear kind of delineation of authorities in the United States when it comes to this stuff. And I'm not, I'm not wholly familiar with the constitution of Massachusetts and how this would be written, but generally, powers to zone and police powers. Police powers to enforce zoning and all that. The federal government does not have this only the state governments have it, and cities have it as a delegated authority. So the state can, in a sense, resend, repeal, tweak what authorities local governments have the mechanism to enforce this stuff. And it says this in the court ruling, to a degree. And it also, you know, is alluded to it a little bit in this article. The mechanism to to make this stuff happen is really, like, we take away your goodies. There's no the state can't, like, sue the Town of Milton and say, hey, you know, you now owe us a million dollars in damages, or $100 million in damages, or whatever it would be like, there's that that's not how that's how these relationships work. What it would be is that the state could sue this Town of Milton and say, you have to do this. And if you don't, we'll try to get some court injunction to, like, force you to do it or to override it. These are all like such messy mechanisms the state can actually just change the law and say, Hey, like you're you're right. Now my understanding of this MBTA communities law is that they've said, Hey, like, you need to change your local codes to do this, you know. And if you don't, we're going to take away some of the goodies that we give you, write the MBTA communities law and say, hey, you need to do this. And if you don't, the state's going to take over something within six blocks of your transit stop. I mean, like, there's, there are ways to do this that don't wind up in this, like stupid legal litigation place, because that's that is literally like the road to squabbling back and forth, spending a lot of time and money not making any progress. If this is the outcome that the state wants, the state has screwed up by putting this premature transit stop in if the state's trying to remedy that by, you know, we're going to take away your goodies unless you play along. That leaves the Town of Milton open as saying, then take your goodies like we don't care. You know, we're going to do it our way. If that's not what the state wants, the state has the authority to basically take over zoning in these places and say, here's what is approved by statute. Now we'll let you go through your process, but you can't say no to this and that that kind of thing happens all the time. I'm sure you've got examples of this. Abby in Minnesota, this is like 15 years ago, back when I was doing a lot of local zoning work, 20 years ago, oh my gosh, I'm getting old. When I was doing a lot of zoning work, we were having trouble locating homeless shelters, and the state passed like a preemptory law saying, like, the only places where you can't where you can regulate these to say they can't go in is here. Otherwise they're allowed to facto everywhere. So allow them to facto everywhere. And that gave, I mean, if one went in, if you applied for one and they wouldn't approve it, the the person applying could then go to District Court, and the district court would say, yeah, like we're reading the state law. This is approved. The city has to do it. That's the mechanism. It's not the state fighting with the city. That's just dumb. That just doesn't that, like, doesn't work.

  Abby Newsham 38:26

  Yeah, it does kind of position the transit investment to be like a Trojan horse, you know,

  Chuck Marohn 38:34

  yeah,

  Abby Newsham 38:37

  I think if you were to approach the capital investment in transit itself as, again, more comprehensively, as a full package that this includes zoning reform and land use planning and master planning of certain areas and sites around station, around the station, that would inform where the stations are placed, and whether or not it's feasible to change the land use regulations in some of these communities, and it might inform entire transit lines where, you know they're just not going to place them, or at least not going to have as many stops around it, if The land use is not going to change. And, yeah, it's, I don't know where I land exactly on this relationship between, you know, the cities and states on these zoning issues. I think it's, it's pretty each one is a little bit different, and it's obviously a growing trend where states are stepping in and getting involved. I think I've seen a lot where, you know, local zoning reform efforts get completely, you know, go, go in all kinds of directions, just because housing is this abstract concept people don't really understand it's important to broader system. Systems generally, density is very, gets very convoluted as a concept, and doesn't really have clear physical outcomes. And yeah, I mean, it takes a lot of, I think, heavy lifting to to engage a community on the topic of housing and housing development and changing zoning to support housing. And if that was part of the conversation when these transit investments were being planned and then made, maybe that would have made a difference here and the complete outcome.

  Chuck Marohn 40:38

  Well, if, if, if, if Massachusetts says, Chuck, it's not very nice for us to write a state law that that overrules local zoning and imposes this on them, we would rather that they came to this conclusion themselves and rewrote their own codes themselves. And so we're going to create this community's law and ask them to do it, and we're going to encourage them to do it by taking away some of their goodies. If they don't, that's the that's the nice Massachusetts way I would, you know, instead of creating a law that just mandates that they do this, and if they don't, they lose the authority to review permits in that area. That would not be nice, Chuck, that would not be the nice way. What I would respond to that is, suing your cities is not very nice. So you're not, you're not being very you're you're you're avoiding one, you know, uncomfortable situation in order to have a different uncomfortable situation. And as an outsider. I you know, I don't know the cultural ambiguities here, but I suspect I'm going to say this, and then someone from Massachusetts is going to say, No, you don't know what you're talking about. This feels like the legislative branch would not agree to do the not nice thing. And so there's an attempt here to use the judicial branch to get the not nice thing done. And that that, to me, is, again, like another divergence point where it's like, okay, if the state is really serious about this, and ultimately, I think this is where courts will probably land, if the state is really serious about this, then the state has to have a remedy. You know that that shows their seriousness. And the remedy would be you either change your codes and allow these type of things in a manner consistent with our law, or you're going to lose zoning authority within X amount of feet of each of these transit stops, because this is a policy that the state wants to see happen. I think we're kidding ourselves. We've made Milton out to be the, you know, this article makes Milton out to be like this town of segregationist, awful, horrible people. And you know, maybe they are like, I don't know. I'm not, I'm not even going to weigh in on that. I do think that we oversimplify the motivations of everyone when we get into court like this. Like, nothing good happens. If this is a policy they want. The state should just be more clear about it, and the state has that power and authority, like, just go do it. The fact that they're not makes me think that they're not as serious as this Court. You know, the people writing this article and suggesting that, you know now they're going to get serious, you know, I think that's not true. I suspect that's not true, right?

  Abby Newsham 43:35

  The not niceness of this whole thing is very offensive to us as midwesterner

  Chuck Marohn 43:40

  Westerners, I know, yeah,

  Abby Newsham 43:43

  we don't like things that are not nice. Can I tell

  Chuck Marohn 43:46

  you a funny story? I know. I mean, I think we're, I think we're kind of getting close to being done. So, yeah, yeah. I was giving a talk in the Boston area, a couple talks, and I got invited somehow to some like, like, special dinner. And it was, I don't even, I don't even know what it was. It was like, 10 years ago. It was a while back, I got invited a special dinner, and I was not like part of the dinner. I was just invited to kind of sit on the edge. And it was this, you know, they were giving awards to people, and it was very nice, and it was very Boston Area esque. And I think the reason I was invited is because the mayor was supposed to be there, but the mayor wasn't there. The mayor's like, Chief of Staff was there. And the guy got up, and I kind of had my back to the whole thing, and he started talking, and he sounded exactly like Mayor Quimby on The Simpsons, who people, oh my gosh. I'm like, I'm listening to Mayor Quimby with the accent and everything. I'm like, wait a sec, this is Merrick, and I turn around, and the guy kind of looks like Mayor Quimby on The Simpsons. I Do you know how, like, when you're in a place, like, sometimes you're in church or something, and you get the giggles, and it's cool, yeah, and you should. Not. I was there with someone else, and I told him, I was like, That's Mayor Quimby. And we got the giggles. And we could not stop giggling, because the more this person talked, and he had, like, the thumb gestures and everything too, like Mayor Quimby from The Simpsons, it was, it was so like, it was such a funny, like, it was such a funny experience, and I just, I had, like, I embarrassed myself, I was laughing inappropriately. So, yeah,

  Abby Newsham 45:29

  that's awesome. Well, yeah, so we can leave it at that and go to the down zone, which is part of the show where we share anything that has been on our radar lately, so anything you've been reading or watching is that your down zone?

  Chuck Marohn 45:46

  I got a different you can go first.

  Abby Newsham 45:50

  Okay, so I actually want to give a shout out to Kevin klinkenberg's podcast called the messy city, and a recently released episode. It was entitled, is your town a bitterness factory or hope factory? So he brought on this guy named Jared Wheeler, who is their economic development director for Allen County in Kansas, and that is where Humboldt, the city of Humboldt is located where they've been doing all of this. Like, very, very unique, like, trail oriented development, very incremental approaches to economic development, very strong towns aligned. I've not visited it. It's not far from Kansas City, but I've had friends go up there for the weekend, and it's this, apparently, really cool town that is doing all of this, like rural place, making and leading the way in that region. And so it's a really, really good interview, and I would highly recommend anybody go look that up Jared Wheeler, and it's entitled, is your city or is your town a bitterness factory or hope factory? Yeah, it's really cool.

  Chuck Marohn 47:12

  I highly recommend Kevin's podcast, the messy city. I listen to all of them.

  Abby Newsham 47:15

  Yeah, it's good. It's really good. Yes.

  Chuck Marohn 47:19

  And I mean, unlike me, he has a really great radio voice. He's good to listen to, and he's, like, deeply knowledgeable and interesting. It's, it's really, really top notch stuff. Yeah,

  Abby Newsham 47:31

  he gets some really great people on that podcast too, um, doing the, you know, most of them are in our interview format. And he brings on people that I've never heard of that are doing like the most interesting things. So shout out to Kevin. You are doing a great job,

  Chuck Marohn 47:50

  no doubt. So one of the blogs that I read all the time is a financial blog by a guy named Ben hunt. It's called epsilon theory, and there's more people that write there. It's a full website. They do everything from financial advice for big money people all the way down to, like, creating a lot of stuff. Their whole thing is investment has become narrative driven more than more than fundamentals driven, and so they deeply study narratives. And Ben is a great storyteller. He's really fascinating. I've had him on the podcast a couple times, and he just wrote a column that I said, Ben, can you come on the podcast again? And so I'm going to do that on my podcast here in the next couple of weeks, I'll have Ben hunt, but part of that he in that. In that column he wrote, he talked about four different books that he said are really, really deep thinking fiction, uh, kind of challenging fundamental narratives. And one of them was the the three body problem series.

  Abby Newsham 49:00

  So good. Okay,

  Chuck Marohn 49:03

  I've never read I did have a bunch of people recommend the show to me. Show was very disappointing. I did watch the show. They said it was very disappointing if you read the books, because the books are, like, really hard to live up to. They're so great. Ben referenced this book. And so I got it and I started it. I'm just two chapters in. I feel like my mindset is a little like, bastardized by the fact that I saw the show. So I kind of have a sense of, like, what's coming. And I wish I didn't, because I the writing is very good and it's very compelling, but, I, you know, obviously I don't know what the second and third book are about, you know, and I'm ready to diverge from the show too, because people said a lot of things. But have you read these books? Abby, no,

  Abby Newsham 49:53

  I haven't read the books, but I saw the show and I thought it was awesome. So, yeah. I

  Chuck Marohn 50:00

  didn't I did not have bad vibes about it. I think the people who had bad vibes about it were people who read the book Right, right. Expectations going in that were unfulfilled. So isn't that

  Abby Newsham 50:12

  always the case? Though, books are just so much better than what can be expressed through cinema. I'm

  Chuck Marohn 50:18

  gonna say this. I think that generally, that's true to me. I had that belief up until the Lord of the Rings movies came out, and then I really felt fulfilled by those movies. Like I like this. This takes, this is the most honest. And I mean, look, you've got almost 10 hours of cinema or 11 hours of cinema in the extended versions to tell that story. So, you know, Peter Jackson was given a lot of leash to do it that I don't know. The people doing the three bottom, you know, three body problem series on Netflix were given, you know, but generally, yeah, like, you can't, it's hard to take a book and make it into a cinema something, right?

  Abby Newsham 51:01

  Sorry, my dog is tap dancing through my house right now.

  Chuck Marohn 51:07

  It's exciting. Dog Day signal, we're done. I

  Abby Newsham 51:12

  know I think it might she probably needs to go out. All right. Well, Chuck, thank you so much for your time today. Great to see you, and nice to see you. Thanks to you. Next week,

  Chuck Marohn 51:23

  sounds good. All right, talk to you later,

  Abby Newsham 51:25

  and thanks everyone for listening to another episode of up zoned. Bye Chuck

  Chuck Marohn 51:29

  Bye.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

• “Court Ruling Paves the Way For State to Sue Towns With Exclusionary Zoning Laws” by Christian MilNeil, StreetsblogMASS (January 2025).

• “Our Financial System Favors Large-Scale Development…but at What Cost?” with Coby Lefkowitz.

• Abby Newsham (X/Twitter).

• Chuck Marohn (Twitter/X).

• Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.

---

RELATED STORIES

---