POP THE CAP 2: How Legalizing Craft With State-level Reforms Precede Street-level Innovation
What does craft beer teach us about crafting cities? More choice allows for innovative development.
Sean Lilly Wilson wasn’t thinking about opening a brewery in 2003. He liked craft beer, and he was spending more and more of his time lamenting its rarity with other fans and friends. But when he saw a need to remove a legal “vestige of prohibition” from state legislation, he unknowingly created the conditions for more breweries to open in North Carolina, including his own.
Proposing an amendment to remove the six words from a state statute that prevented breweries from opening—“and not more than six percent—” Wilson and friends took on the stubborn opponent that is the state legislature and won.
In the years that followed the amendment’s passage, North Carolina took off as a microbrewery hub. Wilson is careful not to bestow all credit on their campaign and the amendment change, noting the many other regulatory dispositions that make North Carolina uniquely well-suited to host a thriving craft beer business: the energy, determination, and skill for making good craft beer was present. But the success of the microbrewery industry in the state could not have happened under the former law. Though it was impossible to predict with the cap in place, the only thing standing in the way of North Carolina and a statewide microbrewery boom was a number.
In this sense, one can draw easy parallels between the beer industry and the current residential scheme in the state. The argument that the prevalence of single-family housing is proof of the public’s preference for single-family housing is insincere. As urbanist blogger and developer Coby Lefkowitz puts it, “When there is no choice, there can be no adjudications on preference.” In both the housing market and the beer market, it turns out, people respond well to more choices.
Once the arbitrary limits on choices are removed, even folks who didn’t see themselves as having something to contribute, like Wilson, start to pursue creative alternatives. “I was sort of an entrepreneur in waiting,” Wilson remembers. “I figured I was someday going to start my own business, and I just really enjoyed the community, the sort of excitement, around craft beer.”
One main difference between land use regulation and alcohol regulation is the level at which the regulation occurs: locally in the case of most housing and other zoning codes are regulated locally. In contrast, while at the state level in the case of alcohol brewing and sales are regulated at the state level. Likewise, statewide pushes for regulatory reform on land use are not nearly as common as those at the municipal level. But there are some ongoing state land use bills, and there is reason to anticipate more.
In Minnesota, lawmakers are considering a bill that would raise the height limit on residential buildings that are governed by the single-staircase requirement. Doing so would allow for more infill housing, as developers looking to make use of smaller plots (like historic downtown vacancies on pre-requirement-sized lots) can fit buildings without needing to construct two stairwells, as is the law in most states.

In the case of this requirement, like the brewing cap, the building code is regulated by the state, so changing the law is necessarily a state-level undertaking. But state regulations are not the only policies up for consideration. And Minnesota is not the only state introducing legislation to address limits on city development. Other states, like Washington, and Colorado, (and including Minnesota), have proposed legislation to remove parking mandates entirely. Some states, like California and Oregon, have passed similar state-wide parking reform legislation but limited it to areas near transit.
There is a beauty and a sacredness to the homegrown flavor of local policy reform. Advocating for state policies that change city development at the street-level can feel too assertive to some; promoting a sort of one-size-fits-all governance on matters that are ideally more intimate and neighborly. There is a beauty and a sacredness to the homegrown flavor of local policy reform. But here again, is where the emphasis on expanding choice is so important. Deregulation does not tie people’s hands, it frees them.
And, importantly, state-level change levels the playing field across cities. If a developer wants more parking spaces, they won’t find them one city over, and they will adapt. Residents who express a “fear of nice things” mindset needn’t fear that advancements in downtown walkability will price them out because such amenities—once legalized—will exist in surplus. The more uniform a regulatory landscape is across a state, the more certain residents can be that small changes to allow beautiful, livable spaces won’t transform their city into an unaffordable second-home destination for big-city big-shots. Amenities become unaffordable when they are scarce.
If Wilson’s campaign demonstrated anything, it is that state policy is local policy. Now almost twenty years after the bill’s passage, Fullsteam Brewery occupies a neat pocket on the edge of Durham’s rapidly expanding central business district. As higher and higher-rises shoot up on adjacent lots, Wilson has watched Fullsteam evolve from a regional destination to a hangout for the neighborhood, as characteristic to its community as a park or an elementary school. Where an idea did not even exist in 2005, a tiny legislative change opened the doors for Wilson to explore a passion freely and create a beloved local hotspot. And across the state, there are hundreds just like him.
Adeleine Geitner is a rising senior at Duke University studying public policy and economics. She is the Duke Urban Studies Initiative Fellow on Sprawl Repair and Nodal Development.