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The same laws that prevent mid size apartment buildings often prevent an existing home from being divided into a duplex or triplex. Why restrict the number of k

The same laws that prevent mid size apartment buildings often prevent an existing home from being divided into a duplex or triplex. Why restrict the number of kitchens and exterior doors? For most single family exclusive neighborhoods, I don't think air rights are relevant. They don't want people with less money moving in. It's the same motivation as Marin County, CA and the Georgetown neighborhood of DC refusing train stops to "keep the riff raff out". The exclusion is the point.

sokoloff 5y ago
Traffic and parking concerns are legitimate gripes that I’ve heard (and I’m inclined to feel myself). I don’t care who lives next to me, because my interactions with them are limited to kindly waves as we pass on the sidewalk. If I couldn’t park my car anywhere near my house because the alternative timeline neighborhood had twice as many cars because it had twice as many kitchens and exterior doors, I’d be less satisfied with my neighborhood as compared to now where the parking is generally adequate except on street cleaning days. That’s got nothing whatsoever to do with who the other car owners are, how expensive the other cars are, or how rich they are. This is also some of where “each new residential lot needs X feet of frontage and Y parking spaces per unit” zoning laws come from. It’s not just “keep the poors out” (although that may be a secondary motivation for some).
- cheriot 5y ago
  The policies you suggest to protect parking are exactly what make traffic worse. 1. Less dense development creates suburban sprawl. This means new people live farther away from their jobs than existing residents. 2. Those new people have to drive more miles each day than existing residents. ie traffic congestion is super linear on population growth. 3. The intersections that become bottlenecks get worse every year. Texas style sprawl spreads out the offices more so their average commute times go up every year at a slower rate (but they still go up). The only proven solution is to allow housing that's dense enough for public transit to work efficiently. I'm not saying your motivations are based in classism, racism, and fear, but the people motivated enough to engage in the political process "protecting the suburbs" generally are. They're smart enough to educate themselves on these issues, see the consequences, and say, "yes, this is what I want". Residential zoning creates geographic segregation between rich and poor. In America that also means the housing crisis is making racial segregation worse(https://belonging.berkeley.edu/roots-structural-racism https://belonging.berkeley.edu/roots-structural-racism). With the way public services are primarily administered at local level, once people are segregated then richer, whiter areas get the best schools, better parks, better maintained infrastructure, faster emergency response times, etc Ironically, early residential zoning had explicitly bad intentions, but the impact was limited because there was so much land available to build on. 75 years later the consequences have escalated.

sokoloff 5y ago

Traffic and parking concerns are legitimate gripes that I’ve heard (and I’m inclined to feel myself). I don’t care who lives next to me, because my interactions with them are limited to kindly waves as we pass on the sidewalk. If I couldn’t park my car anywhere near my house because the alternative timeline neighborhood had twice as many cars because it had twice as many kitchens and exterior doors, I’d be less satisfied with my neighborhood as compared to now where the parking is generally adequate except on street cleaning days. That’s got nothing whatsoever to do with who the other car owners are, how expensive the other cars are, or how rich they are. This is also some of where “each new residential lot needs X feet of frontage and Y parking spaces per unit” zoning laws come from. It’s not just “keep the poors out” (although that may be a secondary motivation for some).

cheriot 5y ago
The policies you suggest to protect parking are exactly what make traffic worse. 1. Less dense development creates suburban sprawl. This means new people live farther away from their jobs than existing residents. 2. Those new people have to drive more miles each day than existing residents. ie traffic congestion is super linear on population growth. 3. The intersections that become bottlenecks get worse every year. Texas style sprawl spreads out the offices more so their average commute times go up every year at a slower rate (but they still go up). The only proven solution is to allow housing that's dense enough for public transit to work efficiently. I'm not saying your motivations are based in classism, racism, and fear, but the people motivated enough to engage in the political process "protecting the suburbs" generally are. They're smart enough to educate themselves on these issues, see the consequences, and say, "yes, this is what I want". Residential zoning creates geographic segregation between rich and poor. In America that also means the housing crisis is making racial segregation worse(https://belonging.berkeley.edu/roots-structural-racism https://belonging.berkeley.edu/roots-structural-racism). With the way public services are primarily administered at local level, once people are segregated then richer, whiter areas get the best schools, better parks, better maintained infrastructure, faster emergency response times, etc Ironically, early residential zoning had explicitly bad intentions, but the impact was limited because there was so much land available to build on. 75 years later the consequences have escalated.