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Sorry, I wasn’t super clear there. In the Netherlands you are prevented from building new dwellings in many places to preserve farmland. This is an explicit dec
by sailfast 7y ago
Sorry, I wasn’t super clear there. In the Netherlands you are prevented from building new dwellings in many places to preserve farmland. This is an explicit decision by the government (and the Dutch people) because that part of the culture is important to preserve, especially in some of the green belt areas. This makes the landscape awesome and amazing, and also keeps cities tighter knit.
Obviously in the US more and more acreage around urban areas is being bought up and turned into housing stock and some of these areas can be quite far away, far apart, and not subject to as many zoning restrictions especially where population is already somewhat spread out (thinking of SW Ohio here, particularly)
- magduf 7y agoOregon (US) has something similar in the Portland area; they call it the "urban growth boundary".
- davidw 7y agoAll Oregon cities have an UGB. It's not a hard boundary, and can grow as the city demonstrates a need.
- sailfast 7y agoThis seems like a reasonable way to ask the question "do we want to expand" as a population every so often, provided it's not to hard to change, and it doesn't promote NIMBY issues that reduce supply and overall growth opportunities for the city.
- magduf 7y agoGrowing a city with a growth boundary is very, very easy. All you have to do is tear down some older structures, and build new, taller ones. Or fill in empty space. The reason this isn't done is purely because of stupid zoning laws and NIMBYism. I think the solution is pretty simple: make a state law that bans municipalities from making any zoning laws at all, and only allows the state government to control zoning.