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> The only solution is changing the zoning laws What about pulling a HongKong / Singapore: Create a special economic zone that is a stand-alone municipality wi

> The only solution is changing the zoning laws What about pulling a HongKong / Singapore: Create a special economic zone that is a stand-alone municipality with extremely lax zoning laws to spur housing & transportation growth? Google is kinda-sorta doing this. To avoid Mountain View NIMBYism, just carve out the Google land for this purpose.

pwinnski 7y ago
Extremely lax zoning alone isn't enough. Houston is a large city with no zoning at all, and it's still not population-dense.
- jessaustin 7y ago
  https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/Off-Street-Parking-Ordinance.html https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/Off-Street-Parking-Ordina...
- TulliusCicero 7y ago
  Houston still has minimum parking requirements, plus local/state road development patterns incentivized car-friendly buildings. It's harder to build denser if you have very little good public transit (or walk/bike infra) to speak of. Density doesn't exist in a vacuum. I mean, Houston is the principal city of a metro area of 7 million people, and has no subway, no mass transit that's separated grade whatsoever. That's not a setup that's going to easily support higher population densities. Meanwhile, you look at a city like Munich that's in a smaller metro area, and it has several subway lines, plus several hybrid commuter/mass transit lines that are separated-grade at least within the city proper. They're steadily building yet more, and Munich residents don't even consider their transit to be all that great! (lots of complaints about the S-Bahn, for sure)
  - ikiris 7y ago
    You don't get public transit until things are dense. :)
    - TulliusCicero 7y ago
      Really, if you're talking about new cities/neighborhoods, it should be done in parallel. If you wait until things are very dense to actually start planning good transit, that means you'll have many years where it's too dense for just cars and so things are borked, plus by then building tunnels or acquiring right of way will be much more expensive.
notahacker 7y ago
Singapore is the opposite of lax zoning: not only do they centrally plan everything but the government owns 75% of the land and develops the majority of the residential property. The difference was the lack of low-rise, high-value property owners to try to block the high density zoning.

pwinnski 7y ago

Extremely lax zoning alone isn't enough. Houston is a large city with no zoning at all, and it's still not population-dense.

jessaustin 7y ago
https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/Off-Street-Parking-Ordinance.html https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/Off-Street-Parking-Ordina...
TulliusCicero 7y ago
Houston still has minimum parking requirements, plus local/state road development patterns incentivized car-friendly buildings. It's harder to build denser if you have very little good public transit (or walk/bike infra) to speak of. Density doesn't exist in a vacuum. I mean, Houston is the principal city of a metro area of 7 million people, and has no subway, no mass transit that's separated grade whatsoever. That's not a setup that's going to easily support higher population densities. Meanwhile, you look at a city like Munich that's in a smaller metro area, and it has several subway lines, plus several hybrid commuter/mass transit lines that are separated-grade at least within the city proper. They're steadily building yet more, and Munich residents don't even consider their transit to be all that great! (lots of complaints about the S-Bahn, for sure)
- ikiris 7y ago
  You don't get public transit until things are dense. :)
  - TulliusCicero 7y ago
    Really, if you're talking about new cities/neighborhoods, it should be done in parallel. If you wait until things are very dense to actually start planning good transit, that means you'll have many years where it's too dense for just cars and so things are borked, plus by then building tunnels or acquiring right of way will be much more expensive.

notahacker 7y ago

Singapore is the opposite of lax zoning: not only do they centrally plan everything but the government owns 75% of the land and develops the majority of the residential property. The difference was the lack of low-rise, high-value property owners to try to block the high density zoning.