4 ms·

Houston has zoning under a different name. It is illegal to build in Houston properties that would be legal in Japan or Europe.

fellowniusmonk 5y ago
Do you have any examples of buildings like this, I've looked but can't find examples online? It seems zoning has a 15% overhead (all things being equal and as best as I could argue with the data I've found so far), maybe it's higher but I haven't found articulable/shareable evidence of that yet. IANAL, so hopefully an expert on HN can help chime in. I've looked (links below) and have done more querying than a comment thread like this probably warrants but wasn't able to find your assertion articulated anywhere. Neither Japan or Houston are unconstrained free-markets without land use control so I'm doing my best to roughly/quickly tease out zonings isolated impact on affordability. Neither locations have 0 laws so they are close to apples to apples and since we're just doing relative comparison I'd rather keep things data driven. Houston has deed restriction but that is a simple free-market/libertarian private contract solution. Does Japan ban deed restrictions? Both japan and houston have historical zones I've linked these two jstore articles as well as a more digestible video. https://www.jstor.org/stable/724839 https://www.jstor.org/stable/724839 https://www.jstor.org/stable/30238667 https://www.jstor.org/stable/30238667 https://japanpropertycentral.com/real-estate-faq/building-regulations-in-japan/ https://japanpropertycentral.com/real-estate-faq/building-re... https://www.planetizen.com/news/2021/04/113144-watch-debunking-myths-about-houstons-lack-zoning https://www.planetizen.com/news/2021/04/113144-watch-debunki...
- rlguarino 5y ago
  I'm not an expert by any means but there's a clip in another comment I made about some of Houston's zoning stuff, I'm curious what you think. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30376623 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30376623

fellowniusmonk 5y ago

Do you have any examples of buildings like this, I've looked but can't find examples online? It seems zoning has a 15% overhead (all things being equal and as best as I could argue with the data I've found so far), maybe it's higher but I haven't found articulable/shareable evidence of that yet. IANAL, so hopefully an expert on HN can help chime in. I've looked (links below) and have done more querying than a comment thread like this probably warrants but wasn't able to find your assertion articulated anywhere. Neither Japan or Houston are unconstrained free-markets without land use control so I'm doing my best to roughly/quickly tease out zonings isolated impact on affordability. Neither locations have 0 laws so they are close to apples to apples and since we're just doing relative comparison I'd rather keep things data driven. Houston has deed restriction but that is a simple free-market/libertarian private contract solution. Does Japan ban deed restrictions? Both japan and houston have historical zones I've linked these two jstore articles as well as a more digestible video. https://www.jstor.org/stable/724839 https://www.jstor.org/stable/724839 https://www.jstor.org/stable/30238667 https://www.jstor.org/stable/30238667 https://japanpropertycentral.com/real-estate-faq/building-regulations-in-japan/ https://japanpropertycentral.com/real-estate-faq/building-re... https://www.planetizen.com/news/2021/04/113144-watch-debunking-myths-about-houstons-lack-zoning https://www.planetizen.com/news/2021/04/113144-watch-debunki...

rlguarino 5y ago
I'm not an expert by any means but there's a clip in another comment I made about some of Houston's zoning stuff, I'm curious what you think. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30376623 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30376623