Opinion: How zoning protects us from Martha’s-Vineyard-ization

My wife and I recently took a day-trip to Martha’s Vineyard, the island off Cape Cod known for its famous vacationers. We took a fast-ferry out of Quonset, Rhode Island, and I was excited. As a kid, my parents took us out to the Vineyard almost every summer—would the island sanctuary be as beautiful as I remembered? 

The ferry dropped us off in the town of Oak Bluffs, and we ambled over to a neighborhood known as Wesleyan Grove. In the 19th century, Methodist worshippers held revival meetings here, pitching their tents around a central tabernacle. Over time, the tents were replaced with small, whimsically decorated cottages, which my family called “the Gingerbread Houses.”  

As we wandered the grassy paths, my wife commented on the beauty of the neighborhood, but I couldn’t agree. A tide of revulsion rose in my throat as I began to perceive the horrible truth, obscured to me in childhood: this “charming” village was grotesquely under-zoned. 

For context, zoning is the set of policies created by local governments that establish rules about what can be built and where. Zoning sets requirements regarding lot sizes, parking spots, and building setbacks, among other things. Clearly, the zealots who built the gingerbread cottages were unlearned in this discipline of urban planning, and the poisoned fruits of their ignorance were on wanton display in Wesleyan Grove. 

It took me time to digest the enormity of the catastrophe. I first noticed that none of the cottages had driveways. Where did the people who owned these homes park their cars? Most would agree that owning an automobile and storing it next to your home is a physical and psychological need, like food, water, and shelter. It is inexcusable that neither the local government of Oak Bluffs nor the state of Massachusetts has stepped in to rectify this issue—perhaps by bulldozing some cottages to create the necessary parking lots.

My unease compounded when I considered the neighborhood’s lot sizes. The lots on which these cottages sit are tiny—some are as small as 617 square feet. A postage stamp is more spacious! America is the land of wide open spaces, where huddled masses yearning to breathe free can finally find some elbow-room. How unfortunate, how luckless are the residents of these homes—condemned to lives of misery and want on their cramped, diminutive lots. 

Wesleyan Grove’s lack of setbacks adds insult to injury. Setbacks establish the minimum distance a structure must be ‘set-back’ from property lines—they maintain an appropriate distance between buildings and the street, while helping increase automobile speeds. I was shocked to see that the cottages I adored as a child had almost no setbacks at all. Some of the cottages’ porches extend lewdly out onto the sidewalk, while others were separated from each other only by a few feet—a lascivious act of land misuse. 

Overwhelmed, we fled from these gingerbread monstrosities only to find new terrors. Martha’s Vineyard is criss-crossed with separated shared-use paths. I was appalled to see cyclists placidly gliding past cars, and wondered aloud, “Don’t they know that cars are more convenient than bikes? Aren’t they ashamed to use a bike path that could’ve been used for additional parking?” 

By now the sarcasm is obvious, so I’ll get to the point: many of us love to visit places like Martha’s Vineyard, but believe it should be impossible to build anything like it here in Norwalk.

Some argue that we cannot sacrifice on-street parking for the sake of bike paths, unaware that such trails would actually mitigate our parking and traffic headaches. Martha’s Vineyard manages its tourist influx without unnecessary gridlock because those who typically drive can bike instead—instead of being stuck bumper-to-bumper, circling for a place to park, visitors can pedal to the beach, ice cream cone-in-hand.

Almost everyone agrees that home costs are outrageous these days, and think we should take action to improve housing affordability. Reducing parking minimums, lot sizes, and setback requirements would do just that, yet attempts to reform these zoning regulations are often met with fierce backlash.

Martha’s Vineyard illustrates a disconnect between our stated and revealed preferences. We say we cannot live without parking lots, wide setbacks, and enormous plots of land, that we cannot sacrifice space on our roads for bike paths. But in 2025, tourism generated almost $500 million of revenue for the Vineyard’s local economy. If Wesleyan Grove breaks all the rules of “good zoning,” why do so many people pay so much money to go there?

I’m not arguing that the city should ban cars, or abolish zoning. I’m arguing that Norwalk should ease its zoning restrictions where possible, and not just in pursuit of housing-affordability. I think it’d be nice if we made it legal to build “gingerbread” neighborhoods of our own. 

Editor’s note: This piece is an opinion article. The views expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the perspectives of the publication or its staff.