text: It is an interesting debate.  I'm certainly a strong supporter of property rights, but there is a balance that's necessary when you have many land owners in close proximity to each other because there is some spill-over affect.  That's why we have cites/towns, and rural areas.  The choice to own land in a city/town comes with the knowledge that property development will have more limits places on it (zoning) as compared to rural land ownership where there aren't nearly as many close-proximity neighbors.
  
  Now, while that is a justification for zoning in cities/towns, it's not an endorsement of extreme zoning limitations.  I still favor only modest limits applied by zoning.  Land owners still ought to have quite a bit of leeway with what they can do with their property.  But there are some big things that warrant limits to keep character of the city/town intact.