Understanding city vs. country

The Local Chicken Laws & Ordinances (and how to change them) Forum talks about how to change laws. Here are a few reasons the laws are what they are.

City zoning is basically designed to protect neighbors from one another. So zoning is designed to group like uses together i.e. homes in residential neighborhoods, businesses in commercial neighborhoods, etc. At the same time most rural zoning regulations do the same. Now people want to introduce land uses in areas they are not normally located, and the regulations have had a hard time keeping up.

People love to live in the country. They think of it as an ideal place with peace and quiet. When city people move the the country to gain this utopia the visualize they don't realize what they have moved into, at least in strong agriculture areas like most of the mid-western and southern parts of the country. These areas grow the food and provide many resources for everyday life. Hamburgers, cotton clothing, corn, wool sweaters, etc. all come from agriculture. Growing products in the country involve heavy machinery, dust, noise, odor and heavy use of land. These practices don't always match the expectations of those who have moved to the country for peace and quiet.

People who live in the city are looking for easy access to work, services, shopping, schools and alike. Most live in an area protected by zoning regulations to keep the residential neighborhood residential.

The root of the problem we are facing is that more people are living in the city and want to bring something traditionally country with them like chickens. People looking for the quiet and choosing to live in the country to raise their chickens, but not have a big farm try to bring the conveniences of the city with them like paved roads, police protection, plowed roads, etc.

The decline of the number of farmers in the rural area has reduced the number of people living on farms, so the rural areas are loosing population and people are moving to town to get jobs no longer provided by agriculture.

Traditional zoning is written to keep the city urban with urban uses and the country rural with rural uses. Conflict arises because the rules and definitions are set based on old standards. Rural government see their areas drying up. Closing schools, loosing jobs in small towns, abandoned farm homes, one farmer now farming the number of acres not long ago farmed by two or more farmers. Rural leaders want to boost their populations and so they allow people to move into the country and not farm and causes conflicts. People not finding jobs in rural areas wnat to bring some of the aspects of rural living, like raising chickens with them. This causes conflicts.

I don't have the answers and am more than willing to listen to ideas on ways we can protect people form nuisances by zoning, but at the same time allow people to receive what they want from where they live.

One thing our (rural) county does that I think is fantastic, is that when I bought my property, one of the disclosures required by the county said that agriculture is the main use in my area, that it involves machinery running at all hours of day and night, that there may be dust, pesticides, flies, noisy animals, and that if I were to be so foolish as to complain to the county, I could expect to be scolded.

It was right there after the page telling me that my property is not thought to be endangered by tsunamis, and before the page that mentioned the earthquake risks.

It's a small thing, costs practically nothing, and yet I suspect it is very effective in minimizing complaints and in getting city people to think about what they're getting into.

We do seem to have a town vs country problem but its more people moving from big towns and cities and expecting the country to be like a disney movie then complaining about noises

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...kick-stink-cockerel-noise-moving-country.html

http://heritage.scotsman.com/people/Your-cows-moo-too-loudly.2753202.jp

I have been participating on horse bb's for years, and "citiots" have been a popular topic forever. I think the winner was the person who installed bright lights all around his country house because he was afraid of the dark and all the animal noises.

Conversely, in the cities, most of the time a zoning regulation was added because someone was perceived as a nuisance to the neighbors. Of course, many go too far, banning the symptom rather than the problem itself. For example, if crowing roosters is a problem, the ban can be on noise or smell (the real problem) rather than the existence of chickens.

Of course, the other problem we've had with chickens is that they were perceived as a mark of poverty - only poor people without refrigerators would keep live chickens.

I was wondering recently whether all the lawmakers were careful to distinguish between live and frozen chickens.