I’ve written about the urban chicken movement
Many communities, ironically including rural communities like Whitewater, there are prohibitions on backyard hens in residential neighborhoods. Ordinances like this are more social than rational: I think it’s mostly small-town regulators concluding that chickens are a bad mark against a community.
(That’s silly, as it’s upscale communities that embrace urban chickens. It’s just one more way in which small-town bureaucrats can’t figure out which way the wind is blowing.)
Rationally, urban hens are likely to be less troublesome than many kinds of dogs that are permitted now.
There’s good news nationally for the urban chicken campaign.
Although nearby Janesville, Wisconsin recently voted against allowing urban chickens, successful and trendy Knoxville, Tennessee looks likely to approve urban chickens:
Knoxville City Council on Tuesday night approved an ordinance to legalize the keeping of backyard chickens within city limits.
The ordinance was sponsored by Councilman Chris Woodhull and approved on a unanimous voice vote. Second reading will be heard in four weeks rather than two weeks to give “stakeholders” a chance to meet to consider improving the ordinance.
Currently, the practice is illegal under the city code.
Stephen Smith, a nonpracticing veterinarian, said backyard hens will “decrease the (city’s) environmental footprint.”
Chad Hellwinckel, with the Knoxville Urban Hen Coalition, said backyard hens are a healthy source of eggs and strengthen community ties
See, Knoxville City Council Approves Backyard Chickens.
The ordinance was approved on first reading on a unanimous, voice vote. Loud opposition in stodgy places only holds those communities back; trendy Knoxville will benefit from final approval and subsequent enactment of the ordinance. When opponents in nearby cities cluck about how troublesome a hen or two would be, it’s not that they understand more about the impact of hens, it’s that they understand less about a socially positive trend.
Whitewater, Wisconsin’s town squires should ask themselves this question: why do so many Wisconsinites see Whitewater as less trendy than a smaller places like Cambridge or Stoughton, Wisconsin? (I’d bet that many see smaller Cambridge and Stoughton as more trendy.) After call, of those three, it’s only Whitewater that has a college campus, with the positive energy and opportunities that provides. Yet, we lag other cities in a positive image.
It’s because a few hundred here — a declining, enervated group of town squires — try to regulate just about everything they can. They’ve kept the town stodgy and backward, reactionary and dull. Most people in town aren’t like that; most who run Whitewater and still dominate its scene are.
Fortunately, this group is in permanent decline, and in a generation they’ll be finished as a controlling force, as they’ll then lack the numbers to dominate a more educated, multicultural community.
Perhaps, then, Whitewater will have urban chickens, too.