There’s a new left-wing movement. To promote urban density and combat suburban sprawl, activists want to eliminate zoning laws across the country that restrict many neighborhoods to single-family housing. It’s been written up in the New York Times, and Portland has actually gone ahead with it. So, consider yourself warned: You can expect this curious campaign to come to your town at any moment.
It’s curious because liberals normally embrace regulations telling people what they can and can’t do with their property. But here they are denouncing one of the most pervasive regulatory schemes in the country, looking to clear the way for multistory urban density. How odd to have environmentalists pushing for laissez faire land use, urging that developers be unshackled to bulldoze trees.
This reflects a hatred of the ‘burbs, an antipathy that can best be illustrated by that icon of suburban summer, the Weber grill.
Let us count the ways the Weber offends: 1) There is the burning of charcoal, a carbon footprint no-no. 2) The flame is usually applied to meat, an affront to the sensibilities of the Veganistas. 3) Firing up the grill in one’s own little patch of green is an unapologetic, if not outright jingoistic, expression of American culture.
Recall the theme of hamburgers in the Whit Stillman movie Barcelona. The pretty girls of Spain have contempt for America in no small part because they think Norte Americano cuisine is represented by hamburgers. “Here, hamburguesas are really bad,” laments the character Ted. “It’s known that Americans like hamburgers, so again, we’re idiots. But they have no idea how delicious hamburgers can be.” The young American men living abroad are in no position to correct their impression that burgers are an atrocity because they live in an urban apartment building. There’s no place to grill.
It isn’t until the Spanish lovelies visit the young men in the States that they are finally presented with proper burgers straight off the grill.
A skeptical beauty takes a bite. “Incredible!” she declares.
“You see,” says the American manning the grill, “we’re not such idiots.” He might as well be wearing a MAGA hat.
Eliminating zoning rules may go against the regulatory instincts of the Left, but there will be many opportunities for bureaucratic bossies to have their way. Again, the Weber grill is illustrative.
Newly dense population will call for all sorts of new and necessary regulations, such as safety rules to protect people living in high-rises from being trapped in a tower turned inferno by careless grilling. No wonder the New York City fire code (section 307.5) devotes 650 words explicitly to limits and prohibitions on “Portable outdoor barbecues.” Balcony fires are right out. The code also governs grilling on the plazas in front of apartment blocks. In the unlikely event a building allowed open flames on its property, the code requires a “portable fire extinguisher complying with the requirements of FC906 with a minimum 4-A rating, shall be provided for any portable outdoor barbecue, and shall be readily accessible whenever the portable outdoor barbecue is in use.”
I have no intention of answering to a fire marshal about whether I am complying with the requirements of FC906. Which is one reason I’m happy to live in a house with a yard. If for no better reason than the defense of my Weber and the freedom for which it stands, I am going to be paying attention to any sneaky efforts to eviscerate single-family-home zoning rules here in the District of Columbia.
In the meantime, I am going to do something that would be criminally foolhardy anywhere but in one’s own yard with one’s own grill: I am going to make the perfect Steak Pittsburgh. I’ll get a nice hot fire of hardwood charcoal going, then drop a stick of butter on the grate. It will melt and soon combust. Into that butter-fueled conflagration I’ll toss a thick strip steak. Soon it will be butter-charred on the outside and rare on the inside.
This being my own yard behind my own house, I intend to enjoy it in the shade of trees I planted myself.
Eric Felten is the James Beard Award-winning author of How’s Your Drink?
