I'm glad they're doing this, and I think there are more ways to use data to make this political argument for increasing housing supply. Specifically, I think on

I'm glad they're doing this, and I think there are more ways to use data to make this political argument for increasing housing supply. Specifically, I think one potential application of data to break up zoning limitations & NIMBY-ism is the use of energy and environmental simulation to argue against right-to-light/solar access rights get used to protect low-density housing. I've worked to develop urban planning guidelines in my previous job, and in my experience environmental regulations like shading studies are heavily, heavily relied on as a quantitative way to post-rationalize NIMBY-ism's desire to stop construction. Why? Simply because there aren't a lot of other quantitative metrics to justify low-density development, and so the only real data-backed analysis that justifies building shorter buildings tends to be solar rights. My current job is as a building energy researcher, and as I've gone about my job - which involves a lot of programming & calculating metrics for building energy (obviously), indoor/outdoor human comfort, daylighting thresholds - it's obvious that the urban argument that is made is a one-sided one that could be potentially undermined by demonstrating metrics that favor <i>less</i> solar access. Or, since the sun moves around the sky - metrics that give you equal solar access at different times, which can allow higher density. i.e what is the urban heat island consequence of exposed urban surfaces to sun, what is the comfort benefit of shade, the harm caused by direct UV, what is the building energy benefit of blocking direct solar gain etc. This is not meant to (reductively) claim that less sun is a good thing - simply that there is more ambiguity then is captured by current zoning regulations or design standards, and as a result we are over-emphasizing solar access when in certain places it isn't benefiting us. At the very least, we shouldn't take the solar-access argument at face-value. And I don't the planning officials and design professionals who are implementing this for the current state of environmental regulations. In my experience, given the impact their work has on the city, it's astonishing how little resources are expended to actually quantitatively study the effect of different typologies on the city, and as a result they tend to rely on community (NIMBY) feedback, and existing precedent for structuring cities. Better data-based tools could help them a lot make a progressive argument for higher-density.