People who run factories aren't going to tear down a house and try and wedge a factory there. That's not the sort of thing anyone wants to eliminate, anyway.
You ought to have a look at this book, which makes the link between exclusionary zoning and flat out racism pretty clear:
I am willing to stipulate that exclusionary zoning (like many other pieces of our laws and jurisprudence) has been used many times in bad faith and to ill effect.
As a literate person versed in current events, of course I am aware of this history.
That does not mean, however, that exclusionary zoning should not and should never have existed.
"People who run factories aren't going to tear down a house and try and wedge a factory there."[1]
When your starting point is well organized, well planned, well intentioned environments it's very easy to underestimate the effects of loosening these restrictions that never made any sense to you and why can't we have a cute little pub right here anyway ?
On the other hand, if you have actually grown up in a place where people had horse corrals next to light industrial with a smattering of houses in-between and oh, look, that's an auto-shop on the back of their residential lot ... you would know that the bullshit people pull in absence of these rules is incredible and fascinating.
When they started enforcing some rules there[2] it had nothing to do with race and everything to do with the fact that one quarter of the town was running unpermitted septic systems because, by god, they were not going to pay for city sewer. Also, llamas.
You ought to have a look at this book, which makes the link between exclusionary zoning and flat out racism pretty clear:
https://www.epi.org/publication/the-color-of-law-a-forgotten...
Oh, and I would indeed love to live near a corner store. Lots of people did and would now, too.