Saige's writeup gives an excellent overview of
American
single-use zoning
and its drawbacks,
but things are a bit different in those parts of the world with
(shock horror!) functional
public transportation.
Consider Tokyo, the largest city on the planet. If its 30 million
inhabitants all commuted to work by car, the result would be the world's
biggest traffic jam, and nobody would ever actually reach their
workplace before it was time to turn back. Yet Tokyo still uses
single-use zoning, and the key to making this work is integrating
zoning with public transport.
In Japan, most train companies are part of gigantic zaibatsu
(conglomerates)
like Seibu or Tokyu, and it is not only possible but common for
one of these companies to construct an entire suburb by itself.
The company buys a big chunk of land, runs a railway through it,
and then builds up a huge number of residential apartments. At the
other end of the line is one of the gigantic commercial centers that
make up the core of Tokyo, offering jobs and shopping opportunities
-- often at companies and department stores owned by the same
conglomerate -- to the future residents of the suburb. People
commute along the railway, which pollutes a lot less than
the equivalent amount of cars on the road. There is also no
inner city decay problem, since proximity to the center is very
desirable, keeping demand high and ensuring that land is efficiently
used.
If the above sounds a bit too utopian, rest assured Tokyo has its
quirks too: much of the historical center of Tokyo has mixed-use zoning,
resulting in factories mixed among houses and a particularly infamous
garbage incinerator smack dab in the middle of the major
center of Ikebukuro. (These are gradually disappearing though,
and in theoretically-mixed places like Shibuya and Shinjuku
many former apartment buildings have been converted to house only
businesses and leisure/entertainment facilities.)
Some of the danchi (government-built
cheap rental apartments) in Chiba could give most Stalinist
satellites a run for their rouble in terms of sheer bleakness.
The desirability of a central location also plays a large part in
making Tokyo rents some of, if not the, most expensive in the
world. And finally, the car congestion is transformed into people
congestion -- but this is limited to a few specific times and spots,
and even at the height of rush hour trains run on schedule and the time
to commute remains the same.
The close ties between transportation and construction companies place
Tokyo a few steps ahead of most other countries, but in much of
Europe similar trends can be seen. For example, while the Helsinki
metro area is pretty uniformly zoned, the availability of
public transport has made a big difference in the cityscape.
Eastern Helsinki, well served with a subway line, has developed
along the Japanese model with residential suburbs growing around
the subway stations and Scandinavia's largest shopping center
Itäkeskus at the (former) terminus of the line. Western Helsinki
and the neighboring county of Espoo, on the other hand, are
much more reliant on the private car, the inevitable result
being daily rush hour traffic jams on the highways connecting to central
Helsinki and the development of American-style strip malls
for car-owning shoppers. (After decades of battle, Espoo County
has grudgingly concluded that this is probably not a Good Thing,
and the subway is being extended west.)
As in Tokyo, there is no inner-city
urban decay and it seems unlikely to appear, but some
of the outer suburbs are fairly grotty (by Finnish standards,
a resident of Mogadishu might disagree). Unlike Tokyo, the
mixed-zone center has mostly stayed that way in reality as well;
here in Töölö, where I live, the first floor of almost all
buildings is commercial but the upper floors are all residential.
Then again, this would probably change rapidly if Helsinki suddenly
acquired an extra 29,000,000 inhabitants...