But let's consider the other side of this argument for a minute. It's easy to look at a great and well-designed neighborhood coffee shop like this one and say to yourself that it is obviously a desirable use and that we should be encouraging more of them in our residential neighborhoods. But what if it was a noisy late-night bar, a nail salon, or a massage parlor? Would your opinion change? Would it change if you were an immediate neighbor? It is perhaps easy to see why the fear of the things we don't want has led us to sterilize our neighborhoods to the point where we no longer allow the things that we may in fact want.

And herein lies the immense frustration that many of us have with our land use policies. There are countless examples of obviously desirable uses and built forms that are exceedingly difficult to execute on because of the barriers that we ourselves have put in place. Whether it's a cool neighborhood coffee shop or new affordable housing, there are far too many examples of these sorts of projects being stuck in some kind of planning ether -- sometimes for decades. We say and know that we want these things, but then it is frequently the case that we can't get out of the way so that they can actually happen.

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