8 ms·

I'm opposed to high density housing as well, for myself, personally. That's why I don't live in a city. But being opposed to it generally, in a city no less, i

I'm opposed to high density housing as well, for myself, personally. That's why I don't live in a city. But being opposed to it generally, in a city no less, is a bit ridiculous. Either you want/need to live in a place with a ton of people or you don't. If you don't like traffic and neighbors upstairs don't live in a city. If you don't like long drives to the grocery store and needing to rely on a car to get around and on interpersonal business instead of professional employment, live in a city. But this middle of the road, cake and eat it too, cities designed for cars, urban sprawl by ordinance just makes things suck for everyone involved, it's the worst of both worlds.

giantg2 5y ago
Many people are forced out of rural areas due to the availability of work. I would prefer a rural area with some land, but it's difficult to find a good job in those areas.
- cheriot 5y ago
  Those people get screwed the most by high rent and long commutes... that are the direct result of prohibiting dense housing.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    How so? My comment is that many people who prefer living in lower density areas are forced out due to lack of jobs in those areas.
    - kaibee 5y ago
      If you had a smooth transition between high and low density, the total area covered by housing would be smaller. So oddly enough, even the lowest density housing would now be closer to jobs in the city. Furthermore, since public transport makes more sense for those in the 'middle'-density area, there would be less for those who choose to drive in from the low-density area. https://missingmiddlehousing.com/ https://missingmiddlehousing.com/
      - giantg2 5y ago
        Why don't we address the root cause - location and density of the jobs? No reason most of them have to be clustered together, or even in the same city as others.
    - cheriot 5y ago
      Because people moving to a city from a rural area have been making a lower salary and are now facing the high costs of a city. An engineer with a signing bonus can make the transition smoothly, but the people forced out of rural areas often don't get them. The corollary to high housing prices is that people sprawl outward for lower prices and end up with very long commutes. Around me, ~40% of SF renters are paying more than 30% of income on housing. I for get the portion of people super commuting (> 90 minutes each way) but the % grows when SF adds more offices. So prohibitions on dense housing screw over people that want a rural life, but are forced to take jobs in a city. They'll have a harder time even saving up to go back.
      - giantg2 5y ago
        Ok, so you assumed they moved to a city. "So prohibitions on dense housing screw over people that want a rural life, but are forced to take jobs in a city." According to the article in this post, people prefer lower density housing. I don't see how adding more higher density housing will meaningfully change that. Because as you make the commutes shorter, etc you entice more people to move there.
        cheriot 5y ago
        People prefer housing they can’t afford. Allowing housing of different densities allows people to optimize their trade offs.
        giantg2 5y ago
        Cities do allow housing of different densities depending on location (zone). Why would mixed density make it any better, especially when the article/study already says people prefer low density housing?
        cheriot 5y ago
        Not really. In practice, there's a small area for apartment complexes and then a huge area for single family exclusive housing. In places without strict zoning, there's a whole spectrum of things https://missingmiddlehousing.com https://missingmiddlehousing.com The goal is that when prices go up, there should be a way for people to build more homes that have a reasonable commute.
    - Gibbon1 5y ago
      I think you are the path to where I am. Which is society is pay an very steep price so that upper managers can live where they want and force everyone else to come to them.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- mikepurvis 5y ago
  Hasn't one of the big lessons of COVID been that anyone can work from anywhere that there's a decent internet connection?
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Hasn't one of the big lessons of COVID been that anyone can work from anywhere that there's a decent internet connection? No, one of the biggest lessons of COVID is that lots of people can't, and being in a field where you can can be a massive advantage in certain circumstances, which accelerates inequality when those manifest because it correlates strongly (though not perfectly) with higher income work.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    Maybe as a Dev or similar, but that's not true for all industries. Even as a dev, there are many companies that don't allow fully remote, like mine.
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  > I would prefer a rural area with some land, but it's difficult to find a good job in those areas. Ironically, that's because we restrict density in cities. Suppose you have a city, San Francisco, ~17,000 people per square mile. About a quarter of what it is in Manhattan. For the same number of people, if the density was higher, the city would cover less area. And then the number of miles away from the city center you would have to go before you were living with cows would go down.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    The article in the post suggests otherwise. Right in the abstract it says that people prefer lower density. So if living in a rural area is now more attractive because it's a shorter distance, more people will choose to live there. There are entire regions with small cities and towns where the commute is already reasonable, but the companies choose to bunch together in the biggest cities. Just look at Appalachia - plenty of small cities to choose from with vacant factories to be repurposed, vacant housing from population shrinkage, etc. It all boils down to choices, and it's very difficult to influence those choices - where company locate, where people want to live, etc.
  - marcosdumay 5y ago
    The bottleneck isn't exactly number of miles until you see cows, it's minutes driven. That is, rural folks would be much happier if the city had more density and a great public transit system that integrates with cars. But just the density would make things worse.
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  I wouldn't call that being forced, I'd call that weighing your priorities and making a decision. Where I live, you can pay your own rent alone working a full time minimum wage job. If you're turning that down, the trade off isn't worth it. You would rather live in a densely packed place if it enables you to do professional work not available to you otherwise. It's always a trade off.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    That seems to imply there are enough jobs in the area for the population. That might be true today, but in the prior decade it can be tough to find a minimum wage job with benefits.
    - betwixthewires 5y ago
      > with benefits Again, a trade off. Why are benefits sacrosanct when we talk about this? Why is anything? If a rural town doesn't have enough business to go around to support it's population, it shrinks. It becomes more rural. People make trade offs. Cities get denser. When it has enough business to support a larger population, it grows. When a city becomes unable to support it's population, it decays. People move away. There's an ebb and flow. But it is important to understand that nobody is being forced to do anything here, they're moving where their priorities are, no place is perfect, it's all about what you're willing to live with to get the benefits of where you live.
      - giantg2 5y ago
        "Again, a trade off. Why are benefits sacrosanct when we talk about this?" Because we're talking about supporting oneself. You can't support yourself with a minimum wage job and paying healthcare out of pocket.
        betwixthewires 5y ago
        Yes you can. I literally live in a small community of people who mostly work minimum wage service jobs and support themselves just fine, have disposable income even. That's my whole point. If you live in an urban environment it is hard to see how someone could do it, I understand, but you need to understand just how much cheaper it is to live in a place where you're not competing with 100 people for a place to live. When your rent is 350 bucks a month you can 100% support yourself on 1000 bucks a month, paying for insurance out of pocket.
- jltsiren 5y ago
  Those people voluntarily leave rural areas due to their personal preferences. They would rather have a good job in an area that can support them than live in a pleasant area with worse job prospects. People are rarely interested in living in dense urban areas due to the density itself. They are usually far more interested in the consequences of the density and the opportunities enabled by it.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    It depends on what you consider voluntary. If you can't get a job in your hometown, then it doesn't feel very voluntary when forced to move to support yourself (survive). Sure, it's a choice but there's pressure behind it. If someone says give me your wallet or I'll stab you, that's still a choice. I wouldn't call it voluntary. It's a choice of survival.
    - betwixthewires 5y ago
      I've responded about this already, but nobody is really forced to move to the city. They can get jobs, just not the job they want. You have to provide a service to your local economy, and in small towns, that means mending fences and cooking barbecue and working on cars. Thankfully the low density also means you can afford to pay your bills doing jobs like that. Some people want to do something they consider more rewarding and meaningful, its like the age old trope of the small town girl moving to Los Angeles to be a movie star. They move to the city because it's a trade off, their priorities tell them that living in a more densely packed environment will make their life better. But at the end of the day, it is always a choice.
      - giantg2 5y ago
        Nobody is forced to do anything ever. Everything is a choice.
        xboxnolifes 5y ago
        Exactly. People can even choose to die instead of doing something they don't want to do.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> That's why I don't live in a city. “city” encompasses suburbs/exurbs as well as urban cores
- giantg2 5y ago
  I think that depends. You could be talking about the actually city (like jurisdiction and laws within the city limits) or you could be talking about the Greater [city] Area/Metro Area. Or even something else.
- nine_k 5y ago
  A city only "encompasses" suburbs because suburbanites drive to the city to work. Functionally I'd say that the urban space ends where mass transit ends.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > A city only "encompasses" suburbs because suburbanites drive to the city to work. I didn’t say that a city encompasses (it's associated) suburbs, I said that the term “city” encompasses, within its meaning, suburbs, to the extent that these are often literally their own cities. The term does not only refer to metropolitan cores. When the source article refers to “virtually every city in the USA bans single family homes...”, you have to understand that virtually every city in the USA is not a metropolitan core city. The vast majority of cities in the USA are suburbs or isolated small cities in rural areas that are exurbs of or even not associated tightly with a metropolitan core. Weighted by population things are different, but that's not what is referenced.
    - nine_k 5y ago
      I agree; this is why I have hard time calling many agglomerations cities proper. They are like parts of Silicon Valley, just giant interconnected suburban tissue with some spots of urban space. Naturally, people living in suburbia mostly do so willingly, and resist attempts to erect cities on the middle of that tissue. If they wanted to live in a city, they'd move to one!
asdfsd234234444 5y ago
In other words, "not in my backyard". But other people's backyard is fine!
- nine_k 5y ago
  The important part here is that the OP moved their backyard in order to avoid high density next to it. Commendable, I'd say.
  - et-al 5y ago
    So continuing that, let's say OP moved to a small rural town. 10 years later, the media proclaims the town for best schools, living, etc. and a lot of folks want to move there and want to build up in OP's backyard. What's OP's course of action now? To move again? I'm not excusing the effects of NIMBYism, but it's natural phenomena for many people and often not about raising property values, but resistance to change--especially as folks age and become less willing to adapt or move elsewhere.
    - betwixthewires 5y ago
      > What's OP's course of action now? To move again? Yes, if that's what I want. It's not really my backyard. it's proverbial, but we can't make the mistake of taking it literally. it's someone else's front yard. I have no say in it. So I have a choice, move somewhere more rural, or enjoy the financial benefit of being an early resident of a growing community. But the onus is always on me, I cannot externalize my preferences onto others unwillingly. There are always decisions to be made, there is always a trade off. You're right about resistance to change. Personally if where I live began to urbanize, I'd leave.
      - uberman 5y ago
        I cannot externalize my preferences onto others unwillingly Isn't that exactly what those arguing for higher densities are doing?
ruddct 5y ago
> But being opposed to it generally, in a city no less, is a bit ridiculous Here in NYC we call these folks 'Manhattanites against the Manhattanization of Manhattan'. Shockingly, quite a few of them exist.
- mandevil 5y ago
  Walking my kid to his second favorite playground on the Upper East Side, there was a sign opposing the shadows from the Blood Center Tower (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/18/nyregion/new-york-blood-center-manhattan-development.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/18/nyregion/new-york-blood-c...). Because why should Manhattan have a gasp 23 story building! It would ruin the character of this neighborhood in Manhattan to have a building that is 70 meters high! What utter nonsense.
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
> But this middle of the road, cake and eat it too, cities designed for cars, urban sprawl by ordinance just makes things suck for everyone involved, it's the worst of both worlds. It probably seems nice to these people at first. Their property values go up, undesirable (a.k.a. poor) neighbors get pushed away to the outskirts of town, gridlock traffic is kept at bay, the town maintains its low-rise charm (whatever that means), etc. But longer term, it causes strange distortions. In San Francisco, the people working the customer services jobs are sometimes homeless because there is nowhere affordable within commuting distance. Artists and musicians just straight-up leave, causing the city to become a cultural wasteland. And in the past year or two we're finally starting to see talent flight due to the out-of-control rent spirals and the rise of remote work. Nobody's really benefitting from this; it's just lousy regulatory capture by landowners that's begun to backfire on them. You can't encase a tree in a glass box and expect it to magically stop growing. Ultimately, you just have to let people build what they want on their land, or your city will not only stop growing, it will begin to wither.
- ZoomerCretin 5y ago
  The negatives of these zoning laws are vastly worse than most people know. US GDP would be 50% higher than it is now if we did not have exclusionary zoning laws. (https://www.theregreview.org/2018/06/14/somogyi-zoning-codes-gdp/ https://www.theregreview.org/2018/06/14/somogyi-zoning-codes...) If New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area alone removed their exclusionary and needlessly restrictive zoning laws, the average worker's income would rise by $9,000 per year.
6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
> I'm opposed to high density housing as well, for myself, personally. That's why I don't live in a city. Sometimes the city comes to you. That's what's happening all over, where people are in suburbs outside the city, but the city grows and suddenly they learn that where they live isn't considered the outskirts anymore, and everyone's pissed that they oppose high density housing.
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  The city didn't come to them. They chose to live in close proximity to enjoy it's benefits thinking they could avoid the trade off entirely, forever. They even considered this a benefit when they decided that as the population rose their property value would go up. They considered the state of affairs they're complaining about to be a good investment decision. The suburbs are never truly outside the city, this is an illusion, and everyone knows it, and they knew it going in, they're just pretending they're getting the short end of the stick here.
  - WkndTriathlete 5y ago
    > The city didn't come to them. They chose to live in close proximity to enjoy it's benefits thinking they could avoid the trade off entirely, forever. In every place except for a handful of cities on the West Coast this is still true. If I had moved to San Francisco or San Jose in 1980 to live in a nice single-family neighborhood setting, there is no way that anyone could have predicted just how many people would have moved to Silicon Valley in the next 40 years. If I had moved to Minneapolis, or Kansas City, or Austin, TX in 1980, I would still (most likely) be in that single-family neighborhood and not having to worry about developers wanting to put up a boatload of high-rises around me.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > If I had moved to San Francisco or San Jose in 1980 to live in a nice single-family neighborhood setting, there is no way that anyone could have predicted just how many people would have moved to Silicon Valley in the next 40 years. Well, thanks to restrictive zoning, they probably could have, in net if not in gross; there's a reason that while lots of money has moved into Silicon Valley, it (San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties combined) have seen less growth since 1980 than the East Bay, absolutely and relatively.

giantg2 5y ago

Many people are forced out of rural areas due to the availability of work. I would prefer a rural area with some land, but it's difficult to find a good job in those areas.

cheriot 5y ago
Those people get screwed the most by high rent and long commutes... that are the direct result of prohibiting dense housing.
- giantg2 5y ago
  How so? My comment is that many people who prefer living in lower density areas are forced out due to lack of jobs in those areas.
  - kaibee 5y ago
    If you had a smooth transition between high and low density, the total area covered by housing would be smaller. So oddly enough, even the lowest density housing would now be closer to jobs in the city. Furthermore, since public transport makes more sense for those in the 'middle'-density area, there would be less for those who choose to drive in from the low-density area. https://missingmiddlehousing.com/ https://missingmiddlehousing.com/
    - giantg2 5y ago
      Why don't we address the root cause - location and density of the jobs? No reason most of them have to be clustered together, or even in the same city as others.
  - cheriot 5y ago
    Because people moving to a city from a rural area have been making a lower salary and are now facing the high costs of a city. An engineer with a signing bonus can make the transition smoothly, but the people forced out of rural areas often don't get them. The corollary to high housing prices is that people sprawl outward for lower prices and end up with very long commutes. Around me, ~40% of SF renters are paying more than 30% of income on housing. I for get the portion of people super commuting (> 90 minutes each way) but the % grows when SF adds more offices. So prohibitions on dense housing screw over people that want a rural life, but are forced to take jobs in a city. They'll have a harder time even saving up to go back.
    - giantg2 5y ago
      Ok, so you assumed they moved to a city. "So prohibitions on dense housing screw over people that want a rural life, but are forced to take jobs in a city." According to the article in this post, people prefer lower density housing. I don't see how adding more higher density housing will meaningfully change that. Because as you make the commutes shorter, etc you entice more people to move there.
      - cheriot 5y ago
        People prefer housing they can’t afford. Allowing housing of different densities allows people to optimize their trade offs.
        giantg2 5y ago
        Cities do allow housing of different densities depending on location (zone). Why would mixed density make it any better, especially when the article/study already says people prefer low density housing?
        cheriot 5y ago
        Not really. In practice, there's a small area for apartment complexes and then a huge area for single family exclusive housing. In places without strict zoning, there's a whole spectrum of things https://missingmiddlehousing.com https://missingmiddlehousing.com The goal is that when prices go up, there should be a way for people to build more homes that have a reasonable commute.
  - Gibbon1 5y ago
    I think you are the path to where I am. Which is society is pay an very steep price so that upper managers can live where they want and force everyone else to come to them.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
mikepurvis 5y ago
Hasn't one of the big lessons of COVID been that anyone can work from anywhere that there's a decent internet connection?
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Hasn't one of the big lessons of COVID been that anyone can work from anywhere that there's a decent internet connection? No, one of the biggest lessons of COVID is that lots of people can't, and being in a field where you can can be a massive advantage in certain circumstances, which accelerates inequality when those manifest because it correlates strongly (though not perfectly) with higher income work.
- giantg2 5y ago
  Maybe as a Dev or similar, but that's not true for all industries. Even as a dev, there are many companies that don't allow fully remote, like mine.
AnthonyMouse 5y ago
> I would prefer a rural area with some land, but it's difficult to find a good job in those areas. Ironically, that's because we restrict density in cities. Suppose you have a city, San Francisco, ~17,000 people per square mile. About a quarter of what it is in Manhattan. For the same number of people, if the density was higher, the city would cover less area. And then the number of miles away from the city center you would have to go before you were living with cows would go down.
- giantg2 5y ago
  The article in the post suggests otherwise. Right in the abstract it says that people prefer lower density. So if living in a rural area is now more attractive because it's a shorter distance, more people will choose to live there. There are entire regions with small cities and towns where the commute is already reasonable, but the companies choose to bunch together in the biggest cities. Just look at Appalachia - plenty of small cities to choose from with vacant factories to be repurposed, vacant housing from population shrinkage, etc. It all boils down to choices, and it's very difficult to influence those choices - where company locate, where people want to live, etc.
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  The bottleneck isn't exactly number of miles until you see cows, it's minutes driven. That is, rural folks would be much happier if the city had more density and a great public transit system that integrates with cars. But just the density would make things worse.
betwixthewires 5y ago
I wouldn't call that being forced, I'd call that weighing your priorities and making a decision. Where I live, you can pay your own rent alone working a full time minimum wage job. If you're turning that down, the trade off isn't worth it. You would rather live in a densely packed place if it enables you to do professional work not available to you otherwise. It's always a trade off.
- giantg2 5y ago
  That seems to imply there are enough jobs in the area for the population. That might be true today, but in the prior decade it can be tough to find a minimum wage job with benefits.
  - betwixthewires 5y ago
    > with benefits Again, a trade off. Why are benefits sacrosanct when we talk about this? Why is anything? If a rural town doesn't have enough business to go around to support it's population, it shrinks. It becomes more rural. People make trade offs. Cities get denser. When it has enough business to support a larger population, it grows. When a city becomes unable to support it's population, it decays. People move away. There's an ebb and flow. But it is important to understand that nobody is being forced to do anything here, they're moving where their priorities are, no place is perfect, it's all about what you're willing to live with to get the benefits of where you live.
    - giantg2 5y ago
      "Again, a trade off. Why are benefits sacrosanct when we talk about this?" Because we're talking about supporting oneself. You can't support yourself with a minimum wage job and paying healthcare out of pocket.
      - betwixthewires 5y ago
        Yes you can. I literally live in a small community of people who mostly work minimum wage service jobs and support themselves just fine, have disposable income even. That's my whole point. If you live in an urban environment it is hard to see how someone could do it, I understand, but you need to understand just how much cheaper it is to live in a place where you're not competing with 100 people for a place to live. When your rent is 350 bucks a month you can 100% support yourself on 1000 bucks a month, paying for insurance out of pocket.
jltsiren 5y ago
Those people voluntarily leave rural areas due to their personal preferences. They would rather have a good job in an area that can support them than live in a pleasant area with worse job prospects. People are rarely interested in living in dense urban areas due to the density itself. They are usually far more interested in the consequences of the density and the opportunities enabled by it.
- giantg2 5y ago
  It depends on what you consider voluntary. If you can't get a job in your hometown, then it doesn't feel very voluntary when forced to move to support yourself (survive). Sure, it's a choice but there's pressure behind it. If someone says give me your wallet or I'll stab you, that's still a choice. I wouldn't call it voluntary. It's a choice of survival.
  - betwixthewires 5y ago
    I've responded about this already, but nobody is really forced to move to the city. They can get jobs, just not the job they want. You have to provide a service to your local economy, and in small towns, that means mending fences and cooking barbecue and working on cars. Thankfully the low density also means you can afford to pay your bills doing jobs like that. Some people want to do something they consider more rewarding and meaningful, its like the age old trope of the small town girl moving to Los Angeles to be a movie star. They move to the city because it's a trade off, their priorities tell them that living in a more densely packed environment will make their life better. But at the end of the day, it is always a choice.
    - giantg2 5y ago
      Nobody is forced to do anything ever. Everything is a choice.
      - xboxnolifes 5y ago
        Exactly. People can even choose to die instead of doing something they don't want to do.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> That's why I don't live in a city. “city” encompasses suburbs/exurbs as well as urban cores

giantg2 5y ago
I think that depends. You could be talking about the actually city (like jurisdiction and laws within the city limits) or you could be talking about the Greater [city] Area/Metro Area. Or even something else.
nine_k 5y ago
A city only "encompasses" suburbs because suburbanites drive to the city to work. Functionally I'd say that the urban space ends where mass transit ends.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > A city only "encompasses" suburbs because suburbanites drive to the city to work. I didn’t say that a city encompasses (it's associated) suburbs, I said that the term “city” encompasses, within its meaning, suburbs, to the extent that these are often literally their own cities. The term does not only refer to metropolitan cores. When the source article refers to “virtually every city in the USA bans single family homes...”, you have to understand that virtually every city in the USA is not a metropolitan core city. The vast majority of cities in the USA are suburbs or isolated small cities in rural areas that are exurbs of or even not associated tightly with a metropolitan core. Weighted by population things are different, but that's not what is referenced.
  - nine_k 5y ago
    I agree; this is why I have hard time calling many agglomerations cities proper. They are like parts of Silicon Valley, just giant interconnected suburban tissue with some spots of urban space. Naturally, people living in suburbia mostly do so willingly, and resist attempts to erect cities on the middle of that tissue. If they wanted to live in a city, they'd move to one!

asdfsd234234444 5y ago

In other words, "not in my backyard". But other people's backyard is fine!

nine_k 5y ago
The important part here is that the OP moved their backyard in order to avoid high density next to it. Commendable, I'd say.
- et-al 5y ago
  So continuing that, let's say OP moved to a small rural town. 10 years later, the media proclaims the town for best schools, living, etc. and a lot of folks want to move there and want to build up in OP's backyard. What's OP's course of action now? To move again? I'm not excusing the effects of NIMBYism, but it's natural phenomena for many people and often not about raising property values, but resistance to change--especially as folks age and become less willing to adapt or move elsewhere.
  - betwixthewires 5y ago
    > What's OP's course of action now? To move again? Yes, if that's what I want. It's not really my backyard. it's proverbial, but we can't make the mistake of taking it literally. it's someone else's front yard. I have no say in it. So I have a choice, move somewhere more rural, or enjoy the financial benefit of being an early resident of a growing community. But the onus is always on me, I cannot externalize my preferences onto others unwillingly. There are always decisions to be made, there is always a trade off. You're right about resistance to change. Personally if where I live began to urbanize, I'd leave.
    - uberman 5y ago
      I cannot externalize my preferences onto others unwillingly Isn't that exactly what those arguing for higher densities are doing?

ruddct 5y ago

> But being opposed to it generally, in a city no less, is a bit ridiculous Here in NYC we call these folks 'Manhattanites against the Manhattanization of Manhattan'. Shockingly, quite a few of them exist.

mandevil 5y ago
Walking my kid to his second favorite playground on the Upper East Side, there was a sign opposing the shadows from the Blood Center Tower (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/18/nyregion/new-york-blood-center-manhattan-development.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/18/nyregion/new-york-blood-c...). Because why should Manhattan have a gasp 23 story building! It would ruin the character of this neighborhood in Manhattan to have a building that is 70 meters high! What utter nonsense.

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago

> But this middle of the road, cake and eat it too, cities designed for cars, urban sprawl by ordinance just makes things suck for everyone involved, it's the worst of both worlds. It probably seems nice to these people at first. Their property values go up, undesirable (a.k.a. poor) neighbors get pushed away to the outskirts of town, gridlock traffic is kept at bay, the town maintains its low-rise charm (whatever that means), etc. But longer term, it causes strange distortions. In San Francisco, the people working the customer services jobs are sometimes homeless because there is nowhere affordable within commuting distance. Artists and musicians just straight-up leave, causing the city to become a cultural wasteland. And in the past year or two we're finally starting to see talent flight due to the out-of-control rent spirals and the rise of remote work. Nobody's really benefitting from this; it's just lousy regulatory capture by landowners that's begun to backfire on them. You can't encase a tree in a glass box and expect it to magically stop growing. Ultimately, you just have to let people build what they want on their land, or your city will not only stop growing, it will begin to wither.

ZoomerCretin 5y ago
The negatives of these zoning laws are vastly worse than most people know. US GDP would be 50% higher than it is now if we did not have exclusionary zoning laws. (https://www.theregreview.org/2018/06/14/somogyi-zoning-codes-gdp/ https://www.theregreview.org/2018/06/14/somogyi-zoning-codes...) If New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area alone removed their exclusionary and needlessly restrictive zoning laws, the average worker's income would rise by $9,000 per year.

6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago

> I'm opposed to high density housing as well, for myself, personally. That's why I don't live in a city. Sometimes the city comes to you. That's what's happening all over, where people are in suburbs outside the city, but the city grows and suddenly they learn that where they live isn't considered the outskirts anymore, and everyone's pissed that they oppose high density housing.

betwixthewires 5y ago
The city didn't come to them. They chose to live in close proximity to enjoy it's benefits thinking they could avoid the trade off entirely, forever. They even considered this a benefit when they decided that as the population rose their property value would go up. They considered the state of affairs they're complaining about to be a good investment decision. The suburbs are never truly outside the city, this is an illusion, and everyone knows it, and they knew it going in, they're just pretending they're getting the short end of the stick here.
- WkndTriathlete 5y ago
  > The city didn't come to them. They chose to live in close proximity to enjoy it's benefits thinking they could avoid the trade off entirely, forever. In every place except for a handful of cities on the West Coast this is still true. If I had moved to San Francisco or San Jose in 1980 to live in a nice single-family neighborhood setting, there is no way that anyone could have predicted just how many people would have moved to Silicon Valley in the next 40 years. If I had moved to Minneapolis, or Kansas City, or Austin, TX in 1980, I would still (most likely) be in that single-family neighborhood and not having to worry about developers wanting to put up a boatload of high-rises around me.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > If I had moved to San Francisco or San Jose in 1980 to live in a nice single-family neighborhood setting, there is no way that anyone could have predicted just how many people would have moved to Silicon Valley in the next 40 years. Well, thanks to restrictive zoning, they probably could have, in net if not in gross; there's a reason that while lots of money has moved into Silicon Valley, it (San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties combined) have seen less growth since 1980 than the East Bay, absolutely and relatively.