15 ms·

Abolish Zoning

111 points by jseliger 4y ago

jjtheblunt 4y ago
This is an inflammatory title, meant for clickbait: if building a home from decades of savings in which to nurture a family, would one want to find an industrial factory subsequently next door, because some article in the Pasadena Star News decreed zoning must be abolished?
- ojagodzinski 4y ago
  And you think that there is nothing between US zoning laws and "industrial factory subsequently next door"?
- Redoubts 4y ago
  Sounds like an expensive place to build an industrial factory.
  - hhh 4y ago
    sounds like an amazingly cheap place to build one to me
    - Grimburger 4y ago
      A factory would not out compete a 40 storey building. Saying this as someone who lives where 40 storey buildings and high tech export factories both vie for land.
  - jjtheblunt 4y ago
    not when there's no zoning?
    - Redoubts 4y ago
      Strikes me as orthogonal, really.
- Victerius 4y ago
  Factories are not built overnight. You could offer to sell your lot to the factory builders and buy elsewhere. In this world, houses would be affordable.
  - throw_nbvc1234 4y ago
    "If you don't like it leave" is a solution to many problems. Just not one that people find acceptable or sometimes even possible.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    have you seen dark waters? the farmer's neighbour sold his land, and a toxic dump was built there. the farmer couldn't sell his land to the company - they didnt need any more. he could sell his land to anyone - noone wants a poisoned land next to a toxic dump. So his livehood was destroyed, and he had to recourse.
  - heretogetout 4y ago
    Don't worry about climate change causing the sea level to rise. If your land is at risk you can always sell it and move, right?
- jacobolus 4y ago
  People clearly shouldn’t put tanneries, steel mills, and chemical processing plants in residential neighborhoods right next to primary schools. But massively simplified and less restricted zoning standardized across broader geographical regions (vs. every town for itself) would be very helpful, and in cities there’s really no good reason to have areas zoned to only allow single family detached houses with no multi-unit buildings or commercial activity allowed whatsoever. And the parking requirements, height limits, mandatory setbacks, etc. make North American cities remarkably space-inefficient and infrastructure-expensive. The zoning requirements in Japan seem like a good model.
  - mirceal 4y ago
    There is definitely a middle ground and I agree with you that the public health concerns should be one of the things that keep some sort of coarser zoning in place. Now, the reason for the ridiculous zoning based on housing type and commercial activity are really really simple: to separate the rich from the middle class and the middle class from the poor. It's extremely prejudiced and wrong. Yet here we are.
    - jen20 4y ago
      It also seems designed to stop anyone walking to a bar, yet be able to walk to a church.
  - lazide 4y ago
    It’s that way because the folks there with control (in this system, the voters, though often ‘influenced’ by local politicians and power players) want it that way. If someone has a setup they consider nice, or even just wants to not get stepped on by a bunch of other changes, they’re going to work hard to protect it. It’s human nature.
    - ambrozk 4y ago
      The solution is to decrease the power of hyper-local interests whose incentives do not align with those of the broader polity. Small cities and even neighborhoods benefit from regional economic growth but would rather their distant neighbors pay the cost for it in terms of density. That's a recipe for dysfunction.
- Grimburger 4y ago
  > in which to nurture a family Over the years I've noticed basically every zoning argument turns emotional like this, you can't have logical, considered debate. It's always about the home rather than the land it sits on.
  - nathanaldensr 4y ago
    Today I learned that nurturing my family is "emotional." Thanks; I had no idea.
  - tharne 4y ago
    > Over the years I've noticed basically every zoning argument turns emotional like this That's because it is an emotional issue for most of us. We put our wealth, our time, and our energy into buying a house and finding/creating a community to raise our kids in. We're happy with with we live, then someone comes in, waves their credentials and says, "You losers are doing it all wrong, let me 'fix' your town". We don't want our towns fixed. If we thought they were bad, we wouldn't have moved their in the first place.
    - nrr 4y ago
      The challenge is allowing communities to grow. You have or want kids, which means that, without imparting a value judgment, you've contributed to some increase in the population. Likewise, your neighbors surely have had kids of their own, or they're planning to, which means that they're similarly contributing to population growth. All of this means that there will need to be more places to live. My question is: Where will your kids and your neighbors' kids live? As you advance in age, how does this play out when you'll want (or perhaps even need) them nearby to help? If/when your kids move away, will they be able to afford to move back? It's probably best that you don't have the answers to those right now, but they're worth thinking about in a climate where the law of supply matters more.
      - doktorhladnjak 4y ago
        As is always the answer in these sort of discussions, "somewhere else" or "not in my backyard"
- pickovven 4y ago
  You don't need zoning to control pollution.
- kqr 4y ago
  I don't get why that should require zoning laws. In the end, no factory builds itself. It takes actual persons out there pouring concrete. Real, fellow humans choosing to ignore the well-being of all the people living around them, enter their neighbourhood and in effect destroy their homes. The fact that society is so bureaucratised we don't think of it that way freaks me out a little. The solution is not more bureaucracy. The bureaucracy is how we ended up in this situation in the first place, where I could walk into a neighbourhood and ruin it, as long as I have the right official permits, and then sleep well at night thinking that I have done a good job. How about we try to collectively drop this idea that "I'm an X therefore I pour concrete where they tell me to without thinking more about it?" Make people personally responsible for their actions!
  - Klinky 4y ago
    > Real, fellow humans choosing to ignore the well-being of all the people living around them, enter their neighbourhood and in effect destroy their homes. Except the people making these decisions or pouring the concrete often don't live in the neighborhood or care, they're "just doing their job". >Make people personally responsible for their actions! They can easily hide behind corporate bureaucracy and limited liability. If you want laissez-faire zoning, please beef up corporate civil/criminal liability and punitive damages, so offenders learn their lesson or are taken out of business.
    - kqr 4y ago
      > Except the people making these decisions or pouring the concrete often don't live in the neighborhood Sure, but would you feel okay about ruining someone else's home as long as it's not in your neighbourhood? > or care, they're "just doing their job". This is the problem I want to address. When you are knowingly doing harm, you are never "just doing your job". You are intentionally taking the role of acting harmfully. As a species, we already know this. When a war crime is committed, it is private first class John Baluzki holding the rifle who will be dragged to the Hague. "I was just following orders, please go after my superiors" is not a defense. Individuals perform actions, corporations or dictators are powerless without individuals willing to go along with their crap. Those individuals are responsible for what they did.
- dhc02 4y ago
  The problem with zoning is that at some point we realized that it was harmful to have industrial land use like factories and dumps right next to residential neighborhoods. And then we assumed that there must be a spectrum with landfill on one end and single family homes in the other, with every other possible land use being some level of bad. When in fact, we need to zone industry that creates sounds, smells, chemicals, or other environmental hazards into its own non-residential areas, but everything else should be allowed to self-organize. Commercial (retail, office space, professional, services) is not industrial-light. It is not something to quarantine. It is integral to a healthy, functioning, tax-revenue-generating neighborhood. The more commercial and retail are mixed into neighborhoods, the more desirable those neighborhoods are. Of course it almost goes without saying that most of the rest of what we mean when we say zoning is also counterproductive if your goal is a functioning, financially solvent, culturally cohesive city: single-family-only, parking minimums, setbacks, etc.
  - belligeront 4y ago
    We can regulate where industrial use can exist as separate laws and get rid of the 97% of zoning that has been horrible for land use in the US
  - zip1234 4y ago
    Many of the first zoning ordinances were just there to keep poor people or other races out. Most places already had rules about industrial and dangerous uses before zoning.
  - mijamo 4y ago
    There are actually much more reasons for zoning. For instance, commercial real estate pays much more per square meter than residential, so without zoning you'd end up with no resident in many popular areas. In a similar way, if you just let anybody open hotels you have the same problem as what came in with AirBNB except worse, which is why hotels have been zoned in most cities for a long time. You also have other reasons such as organizing public transports, infrastructure, avoiding tax competing between cities and much more. Contrary to some belief in here cities in Europe are often heavily zoned. It can go as far as encouraging or forbidding some special kinds of shops / restaurants (ex: limiting number of fast food restaurants in touristic places to maintain a certain "standing", having special tax for luxury shops to have them focus on a few streets to create an exclusive areas growing in the city and controlling the special delinquency that can come with...).
- lordnacho 4y ago
  I guess it's a rhetorical tool, what would be better, no zoning laws or the current zooming laws?
- Bukhmanizer 4y ago
  It’s always interesting to hear this stuff argued out because the effect of too little zoning is much more visceral than the effect of too restrictive zoning. One (correctly) cringes at the thought of a factory being placed in their residential neighborhood. But the converse, and the reality we find ourselves in, is that millions of families don’t have stable housing at all. It’s a clearly worse outcome. Unpleasant housing is obviously better than no housing. but there’s no cringe factor, it’s all in the abstract.
- scythe 4y ago
  "Abolish zoning", like "end car ownership" and "ban sprawl" are the result of the extremism treadmill of the modern media environment applied to the United States's ossified real estate market. Regardless of whether they'd be possible, these ideas just aren't necessary — a much milder package of reforms, broadly applied, would do plenty to address the supra-inflationary housing price trend.
- zip1234 4y ago
  How does zoning prevent an industrial factory right next door? It doesn't. Zones must exist on a plane and naturally butt against each other. Go look at a map of a major city. The industrial areas often butt right against residential.
pempem 4y ago
So much clickbait. Pasadena isn't even able to incorporate the california state-wide relaxations of zoning like building ADUs/in-law units.
- wussboy 4y ago
  Do you know why it is unable to? (Serious question)
  - CoffeeOnWrite 4y ago
    Probably something to do with homeowners that oppose any marginal incremental density in their neighborhoods. No idea how they are able to effectively disregard the state laws (if they are, I haven't verified parent..) though, that's a good question.
    - lazide 4y ago
      Lack of enforcement/consequences, sometimes due to somewhat transparent payoffs/sops to activists, combined with a lot of tarpitting by local gov’t usually. At least that is what I saw play out in places like Palo Alto, anyway.
    - voisin 4y ago
      > Probably something to do with homeowners that oppose any marginal incremental density in their neighborhoods. This is my biggest problem with zoning and public consultation. Why do people feel they have the right to tell someone else what to do with the land they bought and paid for? Where does that “right to control others” arise from? If it isn’t actually directly impacting your enjoyment of your own property, then why is it even your business?
- clairity 4y ago
  you'll need to elaborate or restate that to be clearer, because pasadena was the first southern california city (or at least one of) to allow ADUs. that came around a year before the state statute, iirc. edit: i remember because i was cynical about the move. the statute only gives wealth to property owners and doesn't allow new entrants to establish themselves. what would have been better is 4+1 by right (fourplex plus ADU on any residential property without requiring a variance).
moistly 4y ago
What could go wrong? https://www.propertycasualty360.com/2013/04/18/massive-texas-plant-explosion-destroys-houses-cars https://www.propertycasualty360.com/2013/04/18/massive-texas...
- paulgb 4y ago
  The article is paywalled for me but it seems like this happened in spite of zoning[1]? So it’s hardly an example of what can go wrong without zoning. [1] https://www.waco-texas.com/planning.asp#gsc.tab=0 https://www.waco-texas.com/planning.asp#gsc.tab=0
  - moistly 4y ago
    If Waco’s ludicrous zoning permitted an explosive fertilizer plant to be built near residential areas, no zoning will be much worse. Obviously.
- jpollock 4y ago
  This is a good one[1] - URL says it all. Developers built houses inside of designated flood water storage reservoirs. No one appears to have informed owners during the purchase, and they inevitably flooded when a big enough storm hit (Harvey). It looks like Houston doesn't have zoning that specifies land use? [2] [1] https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/2017/10/12/242103/houston-officials-let-developers-build-homes-inside-reservoirs-but-no-one-warned-buyers/ https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/2017/10/12/... [2] https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/DevelopRegs/#:~:text=The%20City%20of%20Houston%20does,do%20not%20address%20land%20use https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/DevelopRegs/#:~:text=The%....
- zip1234 4y ago
  Waco has zoning.
- akira2501 4y ago
  I assume this is the West, TX fertilizer plant explosion, which is more detailed here. [1] Why people immediately jump to discarding regulations that are being managed ineffectively rather than improve them is beyond me. Lack of zoning is obviously a non-starter, given the complete lack of commercial regulation that often occurs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Fertilizer_Company_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Fertilizer_Company_explos...
dirtyv 4y ago
A great example of tossing the baby out with the bath water. The grocery store chain across the street from my house went bankrupt and closed all of their stores. A truck assembly company tried to get a variance to take over the vacant building they left. Zoning can definitely be improved but I see no advantage, for the average person at least, in discarding it completely
- belligeront 4y ago
  Zoning is almost all bath water. We can regulate where industrial use can exist as separate laws and get rid of the 97% of zoning that has been a disaster for the US socially, economically, and environmentally.
  - tharne 4y ago
    > 97% of zoning that has been horrible for land use in the US If it's so horrible, why do so few people want to get rid of it? The truth is that most Americans are pretty happy with their neighborhoods and communities. Sure, suburban single-family homes may offend the aesthetic of the elites, but most other people like them just fine.
    - masklinn 4y ago
      > Sure, suburban single-family homes may offend the aesthetic of the elites, but most other people like them just fine. Suburban single-family homes are specifically an elitist policy.
      - JaimeThompson 4y ago
        >Suburban single-family homes are specifically an elitist policy. How so?
        kingkawn 4y ago
        False constrain on housing supply despite population boom causes housing prices to rise incredibly, an increase entirely subsidized by the desperation of the working poor to find somewhere affordable to live.
dagurp 4y ago
Zoning is a good idea. The biggest problem in the USA is the complete separation of residential and commercial areas and residential usually means single family homes.
- masklinn 4y ago
  > The biggest problem in the USA is the complete separation of residential and commercial areas and residential usually means single family homes. In fact those are two, or even three, different points: 1. american zoning is exclusionary, meaning you can't have residences, small offices or commerces, schools, ... in the same zone, each must be in its own zone, even if they have similar levels of "maximum nuisance" 2. american zoning has a fucked up amount of micromanagement, specifically in order to forbid multi-family dwellings (aka "poor people" aka "minorities") There's also (3): car-supremacy, with lots of places having insane minimum-parking requirements and many US municipalities having more marking spaces than people, which necessarily craters density, and thus increases distances significantly.
  - pandaman 4y ago
    I don't think it's true. I've lived in different cities in America and have seen plenty of retail in the middle of residential neighborhoods. There are even multi-unit residential buildings with retail on the first floor so the retail shares the very same building with residents. Same is for schools (unless you meant big universities), they are located in the residential neighborhoods to serve residents.
    - masklinn 4y ago
      > I don't think it's true. And yet it is. > I've lived in different cities in America and have seen plenty of retail in the middle of residential neighborhoods. Urban cores predate the invention and widespread use of Euclidean zoning (and of cars). They are generally “grandfathered in” mixed-use zoning, even more so as they were basically abandoned during the post-war white flight, for which exclusionary zoning was a feature.
tehwebguy 4y ago
Abolish arbitrary zoning, reinvest in smart zoning & pollution laws. Reset residential zoning to be a pretty much blanket zone type for any safely engineered residential building type. No one should have significant pollution introduced next door by a factory or power plant replacing a mall or shopping center in their neighborhood. Solve the problem by having real rules, end the ability for some local council person to essentially gate keep what is allowed and what isn’t. It’s probably a massive bribery center too.
- clairity 4y ago
  more pointedly, focus on structural integrity and mass pollution, not "safety" or "the environment", otherwise nimby's will use it as a cudgel, as they do with CEQA now. specify the forces a building must withstand (i.e., provide engineering specs and give examples), not brainless stipulations like strapping lengths. pass effective pollution laws that target key areas like water, air, and ground, not "noise" or "traffic".
- noirbot 4y ago
  This is such a "magic wand" sort of response though. "Get rid of bad laws and replace them with smart laws" is impossible to argue against. The real problems with zoning is often that incremental change is really hard. If you could suddenly rebuild a city or neighborhood overnight, most people may not mind, but when it's all iterative, you suddenly have a poorly sound-insulated group of houses or condos next to a popular or busy sports bar or concert venue. Or you add high-density housing to a single-lane road, now the city may need to adjust speed limits or sidewalks to accommodate the new demand.
newaccount2021 4y ago
carlivar 4y ago
Doesn't the city of Houston famously lack zoning, to some degree? It seems like analyzing Houston could show whether the problems of zoning are fixed or not.
- paulgb 4y ago
  They don’t have zoning, but do have minimum parking requirements.
- voisin 4y ago
  If I understand correctly, they have a lot of agreements on title between Private owners preventing each other from doing certain things, like somewhat informal, market-based zoning. I’ve heard it can be difficult to develop there despite the lack of zoning because the negotiations between private parties don’t have clear and objective processes.
- kthejoker2 4y ago
  Minimal zoning has made Houston fantastic. Whatever mild downsides of mixed-use there has been, development, diversity, growth, opportunity, home value, and quality of life here is phenomenal. https://unherd.com/2022/04/texas-is-the-future/ https://unherd.com/2022/04/texas-is-the-future/ https://www.governing.com/community/houston-is-the-nations-most-diverse-city-report.html https://www.governing.com/community/houston-is-the-nations-m... https://marketurbanism.com/2022/03/14/houston-impressions/ https://marketurbanism.com/2022/03/14/houston-impressions/ https://houston.culturemap.com/news/real-estate/02-22-22-houston-first-single-family-permits-retail-space-storage-cafe/ https://houston.culturemap.com/news/real-estate/02-22-22-hou... https://youtu.be/Z0k7M_Xwx4k https://youtu.be/Z0k7M_Xwx4k
ajuc 4y ago
Police is racist in USA. Let's abolish the police. That will surely make things great. Zoning sucks in USA. Let's abolish zoning, then everything will be great. What's wrong with you people? Just fix what's broken. You don't throw away your home when a window is broken.
- zip1234 4y ago
  Police have no obvious replacement. Getting rid of zoning has obvious replacement, which is rules to regulate the negative externalities that zoning was supposed to address, but has failed miserably. I don't think anyone seriously advocating for getting rid of zoning doesn't have an idea for a replacement.
  - ajuc 4y ago
    > rules to regulate the negative externalities that zoning was supposed to address, but has failed miserably But that's zoning? Zoning doesn't need to be "only suburbs allowed here" or "only factories allowed here". In fact zoning in Europe usually is the opposite: "if you want to build 1000 houses here you have to also build a school, a library, park, healthcare and a nursery within 3 km".
- voisin 4y ago
  > What’s wrong with you people? just fix what’s broken. The process for fixing is significantly more complicated than the process for starting fresh. Trying to make even minor changes gets bogged down in essentially the same magnitude of bureaucracy as starting from scratch. Endless public consultation, money interest lobbying, etc. the effort is almost never worth it for minor changes. Your attitude of incrementalism is, IMHO, why we can’t have nice things today. When something’s obviously broken, sometimes it is best to admit it was a failed experiment and try again.
  - ajuc 4y ago
    > The process for fixing is significantly more complicated than the process for starting fresh. That's usually the opinion of people who didn't actually thought through the whole process of starting fresh. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...
ericd 4y ago
Maximum use zoning seems a lot better than no zoning. Most don’t want industrial or dirty/loud commercial mixed in with residential. At least not without seriously onerous emissions requirements.
ouid 4y ago
But without zoning and roads simcity would just be waiting.
endisneigh 4y ago
Go and vote - if the majority want it to happen it will
foreigner 4y ago
Olde world towns generally have more zoning (AKA "planning permission" in the UK), not less. America certainly has some zoning problems but abolishing it isn't the answer.
- voisin 4y ago
  Source? in what way are the planning permissions in the UK “more zoning” in the US? What else is regulated that is not in the US?
  - foreigner 4y ago
    They're much more strict. If e.g. you want to add a room to your house you have to apply for permission, and then post a notice detailing what you're going to do in the street in front of your house to give your neighbors an opportunity to object. Source: I live here LOL
    - voisin 4y ago
      Add a room as in add an addition to your house? Or change the interior configuration? If the former, it is no different in the US if the zoning does not already allow for the expansion (I.e. as in the case of most suburban houses, the house is already built to the maximum size on the lot and the home owner needs a variance)
inamberclad 4y ago
Living in a city like Houston without conventional zoning means lots of great and interesting buildings, but it also means that the worst apartments get put right next to the highway, industrial facilities can be co-located with your residence, and transport and sidewalks are a nightmare. Zoning can and should be used for things like ensuring efficient highways and walking areas, and keeping people safe from pollutants. Too often though, it's used as an instrument of class warfare, keeping the overlap of affordable and nice as small as possible.
- zip1234 4y ago
  All of these things: "the worst apartments get put right next to the highway, industrial facilities can be co-located with your residence, and transport and sidewalks are a nightmare" happen in places with zoning. Houston is not perfect and certainly their transportation policy is not great, but zoning doesn't solve any of those. Lines on a map designating an industrial area and such seems so orderly, but in practice those zones have to butt against each other. Meaning it happens often that 'incompatible uses' go near each other. Zoning solves nothing about the real problems that zoning is supposed to solve, which is negative externalities like noise, traffic, etc. Those are best fixed with purpose built rules such as noise ordinances. Someone in a 'residential' neighborhood can have a car louder than an industrial plant. Zoning doesn't address that at all.
deleted 4y ago
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ThomW 4y ago
lol no thanks. The author has obviously never been to Houston.
CaliforniaKarl 4y ago
The _Life Where I'm From_ episode on zoning in Japan is useful, I think, as a point of comparison. Zoning in Japan can still be pretty complex (limits on floorspace, setback, and angles), but allows for environments that many people like. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfm2xCKOCNk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfm2xCKOCNk
runxel 4y ago
Let me tell you: Zoning in itself is not a bad thing per se! Quite the contrary. I guess nearly all countries belonging to the "Global North" have them. And they do so for a reason. Tossing out zoning laws alltogether is just another nail in the ethically bankrupt city plannings coffin. Instead the zoning laws have to get better by revising their underlying premises. E.g. why the hell do you guys outlaw condos? In Germany we have a gradient on whats allowed and what not. The "BauNVO" (Baunutzungsverordnung) regulates that on a broad level. Then you will go to a more granular level, the "B-Plan" (Bebauungsplan). There it will have more regulations which have to be followed. E.g. it is very often the case that the ground level is reserved for commercial use, but on the other levels must be condos.
voisin 4y ago
In the town I am from a developer bought land to put up a tower. The zoning law was set in the 80s and allowed for added density in this particular area. The proposed development complied with that zoning and so the application process was straightforward and didn’t require a long drawn out combative process, and still there have been numerous articles and handwringing by politicians that it was unconscionable that this development could be approved by city staff without having to go through public commentary and consultation and a shakedown by politicians demanding a tithe for parks or public art. This world is insane. It never ceases to amazing me.
paulsutter 4y ago
One reason England is so beautiful, most of the country is zoned for agriculture and can’t be built up: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/land-cover-atlas-uk-1.744440 https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/land-cover-atlas-uk-1.74...
snidane 4y ago
Abolish and replace with what? How do you ensure that the outcome doesn't resemble post-soviet privatisations that are impossible to get undone within 100 years, if even that. It looks great on paper, until it doesn't in practice when it turns out there are bazillion ways to game an anarchic system which some "architect" assumed will self-govern. Discarding zoning, I can already see public parks getting converted to smelly pig farms and for profit cemeteries. Land is leased for infinite time durations, so very very hard to undo.
TimPC 4y ago
I think minimal zoning is much more viable than no zoning. It makes a lot of sense to preserve the hard line between industrial and residential zoning while blurring the line between residential and commercial zoning. No one wants factories and power plants springing up in residential areas and having insufficient zoning to prevent that would be a bad idea. But I live in a city where 70% of the city is zoned SFH. It's literally impossible for people to build 4-plexes, 6-plexes or low-rises in these residential neighborhoods. Montreal, allows for this while Toronto doesn't and it's a large part of the reason that housing in Montreal costs roughly half of housing in Toronto. Housing in Toronto costs over 10.5 years of average income in Toronto, which makes it only slightly more affordable than San Francisco where housing is around 11.5 years of average income. A large part of this is the city government does everything in their power to not build new housing while 300,000 new immigrants to come the city a year. Housing affordability is unbelievably poor and a sizeable percentage of residents pay for rent with money they need for food. Food bank usage is large and growing and the city is getting dramatically harder to live in for many of its residents. Surely there has to be something better.
- foogazi 4y ago
  > A large part of this is the city government does everything in their power to not build new housing while 300,000 new immigrants to come the city a year. Why do immigrants keep going to the city when it is so expensive?
  - TimPC 4y ago
    Because the big city is where both existing communities from their country are and where the best jobs are.
smugma 4y ago
Isn’t the mass sprawl of Houston directly connected to its lack of zoning regulations?
NonNefarious 4y ago
Ugh. It's paywalled, but you can see the fallacies impending in the first paragraph, citing the past where corporations weren't buying up entire neighborhoods at once. The country is not "full." The bellyaching about zoning is really just shilling for developers.
- NonNefarious 4y ago
  Yes, mod facts you don't like down, Redditors. Or... inform yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEwxYvQVU5g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEwxYvQVU5g
Pxtl 4y ago
If you overlay maps of traffic accidents with age of buildings, you will see that post-war North American urban planning up until modern suburbia has had an atrocious effect on traffic safety. I can't think of any other profession that has collectively failed us as badly as urban planning, having simultaneously created a housing crisis, a climate change crisis, and a public health crisis. It's like medicine before Semmelweis.
hedora 4y ago
I can't read the article, but it's about California, and in California, zoning isn't the issue. The issue is abusive planning departments. It routinely takes over a year to get through permitting. During that time owners have to pay interest on the new place, insurance, and are also paying to retain architects, engineers, etc. Homeowners are randomly bankrupted by nonsensical environmental restrictions (examples: banning modern septic technologies, and tightening requirements for old style installs. Once a plot is subdivided and sold, declare it unbuildable. Demanding trenches being dug to test soil suitability for leachfields, then denying applications because the trench disturbed the soil. Some of this crap was recently banned, but just for accessory dwelling units (aka. mother in law cottages), so it's possible to reform the system, and there are even laws on the books that provide a blueprint.
- cuteboy19 4y ago
  >The issue is abusive planning departments Why are cities being "planned" anyways? So much hubris in thinking that you can plan better than the free market
  - adrianN 4y ago
    Transaction costs in city development are very high and change takes forever. I doubt the "free market" (how free exactly?) would converge in reasonable time. I also find it plausible that the price of anarchy in city planning is very high. For example I doubt that the free market would ever build public transport.
- Pxtl 4y ago
  I can't speak for Cali, butt in Toronto the reason planning departments can be abusive is because of zoning. Every building is de jure illegal because of zoning, so every build requires a variance from the zoning and the official plan, resulting in a multi-year process of negotiations, public consultation, horse trading, adjudications, and delays. This means endless years of legal fees, filing fees, and carrying costs before they can build. The zoning and plan are what enables this sandbagging. Nothing is allowed as of right. Housing is only legal in the same way that murder is legal: it isn't but there's a process for getting a pardon.

111 points by jseliger 4y ago

This is an inflammatory title, meant for clickbait: if building a home from decades of savings in which to nurture a family, would one want to find an industrial factory subsequently next door, because some article in the Pasadena Star News decreed zoning must be abolished?

ojagodzinski 4y ago
And you think that there is nothing between US zoning laws and "industrial factory subsequently next door"?
Redoubts 4y ago
Sounds like an expensive place to build an industrial factory.
- hhh 4y ago
  sounds like an amazingly cheap place to build one to me
  - Grimburger 4y ago
    A factory would not out compete a 40 storey building. Saying this as someone who lives where 40 storey buildings and high tech export factories both vie for land.
- jjtheblunt 4y ago
  not when there's no zoning?
  - Redoubts 4y ago
    Strikes me as orthogonal, really.
Victerius 4y ago
Factories are not built overnight. You could offer to sell your lot to the factory builders and buy elsewhere. In this world, houses would be affordable.
- throw_nbvc1234 4y ago
  "If you don't like it leave" is a solution to many problems. Just not one that people find acceptable or sometimes even possible.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  have you seen dark waters? the farmer's neighbour sold his land, and a toxic dump was built there. the farmer couldn't sell his land to the company - they didnt need any more. he could sell his land to anyone - noone wants a poisoned land next to a toxic dump. So his livehood was destroyed, and he had to recourse.
- heretogetout 4y ago
  Don't worry about climate change causing the sea level to rise. If your land is at risk you can always sell it and move, right?
jacobolus 4y ago
People clearly shouldn’t put tanneries, steel mills, and chemical processing plants in residential neighborhoods right next to primary schools. But massively simplified and less restricted zoning standardized across broader geographical regions (vs. every town for itself) would be very helpful, and in cities there’s really no good reason to have areas zoned to only allow single family detached houses with no multi-unit buildings or commercial activity allowed whatsoever. And the parking requirements, height limits, mandatory setbacks, etc. make North American cities remarkably space-inefficient and infrastructure-expensive. The zoning requirements in Japan seem like a good model.
- mirceal 4y ago
  There is definitely a middle ground and I agree with you that the public health concerns should be one of the things that keep some sort of coarser zoning in place. Now, the reason for the ridiculous zoning based on housing type and commercial activity are really really simple: to separate the rich from the middle class and the middle class from the poor. It's extremely prejudiced and wrong. Yet here we are.
  - jen20 4y ago
    It also seems designed to stop anyone walking to a bar, yet be able to walk to a church.
- lazide 4y ago
  It’s that way because the folks there with control (in this system, the voters, though often ‘influenced’ by local politicians and power players) want it that way. If someone has a setup they consider nice, or even just wants to not get stepped on by a bunch of other changes, they’re going to work hard to protect it. It’s human nature.
  - ambrozk 4y ago
    The solution is to decrease the power of hyper-local interests whose incentives do not align with those of the broader polity. Small cities and even neighborhoods benefit from regional economic growth but would rather their distant neighbors pay the cost for it in terms of density. That's a recipe for dysfunction.
Grimburger 4y ago
> in which to nurture a family Over the years I've noticed basically every zoning argument turns emotional like this, you can't have logical, considered debate. It's always about the home rather than the land it sits on.
- nathanaldensr 4y ago
  Today I learned that nurturing my family is "emotional." Thanks; I had no idea.
- tharne 4y ago
  > Over the years I've noticed basically every zoning argument turns emotional like this That's because it is an emotional issue for most of us. We put our wealth, our time, and our energy into buying a house and finding/creating a community to raise our kids in. We're happy with with we live, then someone comes in, waves their credentials and says, "You losers are doing it all wrong, let me 'fix' your town". We don't want our towns fixed. If we thought they were bad, we wouldn't have moved their in the first place.
  - nrr 4y ago
    The challenge is allowing communities to grow. You have or want kids, which means that, without imparting a value judgment, you've contributed to some increase in the population. Likewise, your neighbors surely have had kids of their own, or they're planning to, which means that they're similarly contributing to population growth. All of this means that there will need to be more places to live. My question is: Where will your kids and your neighbors' kids live? As you advance in age, how does this play out when you'll want (or perhaps even need) them nearby to help? If/when your kids move away, will they be able to afford to move back? It's probably best that you don't have the answers to those right now, but they're worth thinking about in a climate where the law of supply matters more.
    - doktorhladnjak 4y ago
      As is always the answer in these sort of discussions, "somewhere else" or "not in my backyard"
pickovven 4y ago
You don't need zoning to control pollution.
kqr 4y ago
I don't get why that should require zoning laws. In the end, no factory builds itself. It takes actual persons out there pouring concrete. Real, fellow humans choosing to ignore the well-being of all the people living around them, enter their neighbourhood and in effect destroy their homes. The fact that society is so bureaucratised we don't think of it that way freaks me out a little. The solution is not more bureaucracy. The bureaucracy is how we ended up in this situation in the first place, where I could walk into a neighbourhood and ruin it, as long as I have the right official permits, and then sleep well at night thinking that I have done a good job. How about we try to collectively drop this idea that "I'm an X therefore I pour concrete where they tell me to without thinking more about it?" Make people personally responsible for their actions!
- Klinky 4y ago
  > Real, fellow humans choosing to ignore the well-being of all the people living around them, enter their neighbourhood and in effect destroy their homes. Except the people making these decisions or pouring the concrete often don't live in the neighborhood or care, they're "just doing their job". >Make people personally responsible for their actions! They can easily hide behind corporate bureaucracy and limited liability. If you want laissez-faire zoning, please beef up corporate civil/criminal liability and punitive damages, so offenders learn their lesson or are taken out of business.
  - kqr 4y ago
    > Except the people making these decisions or pouring the concrete often don't live in the neighborhood Sure, but would you feel okay about ruining someone else's home as long as it's not in your neighbourhood? > or care, they're "just doing their job". This is the problem I want to address. When you are knowingly doing harm, you are never "just doing your job". You are intentionally taking the role of acting harmfully. As a species, we already know this. When a war crime is committed, it is private first class John Baluzki holding the rifle who will be dragged to the Hague. "I was just following orders, please go after my superiors" is not a defense. Individuals perform actions, corporations or dictators are powerless without individuals willing to go along with their crap. Those individuals are responsible for what they did.
dhc02 4y ago
The problem with zoning is that at some point we realized that it was harmful to have industrial land use like factories and dumps right next to residential neighborhoods. And then we assumed that there must be a spectrum with landfill on one end and single family homes in the other, with every other possible land use being some level of bad. When in fact, we need to zone industry that creates sounds, smells, chemicals, or other environmental hazards into its own non-residential areas, but everything else should be allowed to self-organize. Commercial (retail, office space, professional, services) is not industrial-light. It is not something to quarantine. It is integral to a healthy, functioning, tax-revenue-generating neighborhood. The more commercial and retail are mixed into neighborhoods, the more desirable those neighborhoods are. Of course it almost goes without saying that most of the rest of what we mean when we say zoning is also counterproductive if your goal is a functioning, financially solvent, culturally cohesive city: single-family-only, parking minimums, setbacks, etc.
- belligeront 4y ago
  We can regulate where industrial use can exist as separate laws and get rid of the 97% of zoning that has been horrible for land use in the US
- zip1234 4y ago
  Many of the first zoning ordinances were just there to keep poor people or other races out. Most places already had rules about industrial and dangerous uses before zoning.
- mijamo 4y ago
  There are actually much more reasons for zoning. For instance, commercial real estate pays much more per square meter than residential, so without zoning you'd end up with no resident in many popular areas. In a similar way, if you just let anybody open hotels you have the same problem as what came in with AirBNB except worse, which is why hotels have been zoned in most cities for a long time. You also have other reasons such as organizing public transports, infrastructure, avoiding tax competing between cities and much more. Contrary to some belief in here cities in Europe are often heavily zoned. It can go as far as encouraging or forbidding some special kinds of shops / restaurants (ex: limiting number of fast food restaurants in touristic places to maintain a certain "standing", having special tax for luxury shops to have them focus on a few streets to create an exclusive areas growing in the city and controlling the special delinquency that can come with...).
lordnacho 4y ago
I guess it's a rhetorical tool, what would be better, no zoning laws or the current zooming laws?
Bukhmanizer 4y ago
It’s always interesting to hear this stuff argued out because the effect of too little zoning is much more visceral than the effect of too restrictive zoning. One (correctly) cringes at the thought of a factory being placed in their residential neighborhood. But the converse, and the reality we find ourselves in, is that millions of families don’t have stable housing at all. It’s a clearly worse outcome. Unpleasant housing is obviously better than no housing. but there’s no cringe factor, it’s all in the abstract.
scythe 4y ago
"Abolish zoning", like "end car ownership" and "ban sprawl" are the result of the extremism treadmill of the modern media environment applied to the United States's ossified real estate market. Regardless of whether they'd be possible, these ideas just aren't necessary — a much milder package of reforms, broadly applied, would do plenty to address the supra-inflationary housing price trend.
zip1234 4y ago
How does zoning prevent an industrial factory right next door? It doesn't. Zones must exist on a plane and naturally butt against each other. Go look at a map of a major city. The industrial areas often butt right against residential.

pempem 4y ago

So much clickbait. Pasadena isn't even able to incorporate the california state-wide relaxations of zoning like building ADUs/in-law units.

wussboy 4y ago
Do you know why it is unable to? (Serious question)
- CoffeeOnWrite 4y ago
  Probably something to do with homeowners that oppose any marginal incremental density in their neighborhoods. No idea how they are able to effectively disregard the state laws (if they are, I haven't verified parent..) though, that's a good question.
  - lazide 4y ago
    Lack of enforcement/consequences, sometimes due to somewhat transparent payoffs/sops to activists, combined with a lot of tarpitting by local gov’t usually. At least that is what I saw play out in places like Palo Alto, anyway.
  - voisin 4y ago
    > Probably something to do with homeowners that oppose any marginal incremental density in their neighborhoods. This is my biggest problem with zoning and public consultation. Why do people feel they have the right to tell someone else what to do with the land they bought and paid for? Where does that “right to control others” arise from? If it isn’t actually directly impacting your enjoyment of your own property, then why is it even your business?
clairity 4y ago
you'll need to elaborate or restate that to be clearer, because pasadena was the first southern california city (or at least one of) to allow ADUs. that came around a year before the state statute, iirc. edit: i remember because i was cynical about the move. the statute only gives wealth to property owners and doesn't allow new entrants to establish themselves. what would have been better is 4+1 by right (fourplex plus ADU on any residential property without requiring a variance).

moistly 4y ago

What could go wrong? https://www.propertycasualty360.com/2013/04/18/massive-texas-plant-explosion-destroys-houses-cars https://www.propertycasualty360.com/2013/04/18/massive-texas...

paulgb 4y ago
The article is paywalled for me but it seems like this happened in spite of zoning[1]? So it’s hardly an example of what can go wrong without zoning. [1] https://www.waco-texas.com/planning.asp#gsc.tab=0 https://www.waco-texas.com/planning.asp#gsc.tab=0
- moistly 4y ago
  If Waco’s ludicrous zoning permitted an explosive fertilizer plant to be built near residential areas, no zoning will be much worse. Obviously.
jpollock 4y ago
This is a good one[1] - URL says it all. Developers built houses inside of designated flood water storage reservoirs. No one appears to have informed owners during the purchase, and they inevitably flooded when a big enough storm hit (Harvey). It looks like Houston doesn't have zoning that specifies land use? [2] [1] https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/2017/10/12/242103/houston-officials-let-developers-build-homes-inside-reservoirs-but-no-one-warned-buyers/ https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/2017/10/12/... [2] https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/DevelopRegs/#:~:text=The%20City%20of%20Houston%20does,do%20not%20address%20land%20use https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/DevelopRegs/#:~:text=The%....
zip1234 4y ago
Waco has zoning.
akira2501 4y ago
I assume this is the West, TX fertilizer plant explosion, which is more detailed here. [1] Why people immediately jump to discarding regulations that are being managed ineffectively rather than improve them is beyond me. Lack of zoning is obviously a non-starter, given the complete lack of commercial regulation that often occurs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Fertilizer_Company_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Fertilizer_Company_explos...

dirtyv 4y ago

A great example of tossing the baby out with the bath water. The grocery store chain across the street from my house went bankrupt and closed all of their stores. A truck assembly company tried to get a variance to take over the vacant building they left. Zoning can definitely be improved but I see no advantage, for the average person at least, in discarding it completely

belligeront 4y ago
Zoning is almost all bath water. We can regulate where industrial use can exist as separate laws and get rid of the 97% of zoning that has been a disaster for the US socially, economically, and environmentally.
- tharne 4y ago
  > 97% of zoning that has been horrible for land use in the US If it's so horrible, why do so few people want to get rid of it? The truth is that most Americans are pretty happy with their neighborhoods and communities. Sure, suburban single-family homes may offend the aesthetic of the elites, but most other people like them just fine.
  - masklinn 4y ago
    > Sure, suburban single-family homes may offend the aesthetic of the elites, but most other people like them just fine. Suburban single-family homes are specifically an elitist policy.
    - JaimeThompson 4y ago
      >Suburban single-family homes are specifically an elitist policy. How so?
      - kingkawn 4y ago
        False constrain on housing supply despite population boom causes housing prices to rise incredibly, an increase entirely subsidized by the desperation of the working poor to find somewhere affordable to live.

dagurp 4y ago

Zoning is a good idea. The biggest problem in the USA is the complete separation of residential and commercial areas and residential usually means single family homes.

masklinn 4y ago
> The biggest problem in the USA is the complete separation of residential and commercial areas and residential usually means single family homes. In fact those are two, or even three, different points: 1. american zoning is exclusionary, meaning you can't have residences, small offices or commerces, schools, ... in the same zone, each must be in its own zone, even if they have similar levels of "maximum nuisance" 2. american zoning has a fucked up amount of micromanagement, specifically in order to forbid multi-family dwellings (aka "poor people" aka "minorities") There's also (3): car-supremacy, with lots of places having insane minimum-parking requirements and many US municipalities having more marking spaces than people, which necessarily craters density, and thus increases distances significantly.
- pandaman 4y ago
  I don't think it's true. I've lived in different cities in America and have seen plenty of retail in the middle of residential neighborhoods. There are even multi-unit residential buildings with retail on the first floor so the retail shares the very same building with residents. Same is for schools (unless you meant big universities), they are located in the residential neighborhoods to serve residents.
  - masklinn 4y ago
    > I don't think it's true. And yet it is. > I've lived in different cities in America and have seen plenty of retail in the middle of residential neighborhoods. Urban cores predate the invention and widespread use of Euclidean zoning (and of cars). They are generally “grandfathered in” mixed-use zoning, even more so as they were basically abandoned during the post-war white flight, for which exclusionary zoning was a feature.

tehwebguy 4y ago

Abolish arbitrary zoning, reinvest in smart zoning & pollution laws. Reset residential zoning to be a pretty much blanket zone type for any safely engineered residential building type. No one should have significant pollution introduced next door by a factory or power plant replacing a mall or shopping center in their neighborhood. Solve the problem by having real rules, end the ability for some local council person to essentially gate keep what is allowed and what isn’t. It’s probably a massive bribery center too.

clairity 4y ago
more pointedly, focus on structural integrity and mass pollution, not "safety" or "the environment", otherwise nimby's will use it as a cudgel, as they do with CEQA now. specify the forces a building must withstand (i.e., provide engineering specs and give examples), not brainless stipulations like strapping lengths. pass effective pollution laws that target key areas like water, air, and ground, not "noise" or "traffic".
noirbot 4y ago
This is such a "magic wand" sort of response though. "Get rid of bad laws and replace them with smart laws" is impossible to argue against. The real problems with zoning is often that incremental change is really hard. If you could suddenly rebuild a city or neighborhood overnight, most people may not mind, but when it's all iterative, you suddenly have a poorly sound-insulated group of houses or condos next to a popular or busy sports bar or concert venue. Or you add high-density housing to a single-lane road, now the city may need to adjust speed limits or sidewalks to accommodate the new demand.

newaccount2021 4y ago

carlivar 4y ago

Doesn't the city of Houston famously lack zoning, to some degree? It seems like analyzing Houston could show whether the problems of zoning are fixed or not.

paulgb 4y ago
They don’t have zoning, but do have minimum parking requirements.
voisin 4y ago
If I understand correctly, they have a lot of agreements on title between Private owners preventing each other from doing certain things, like somewhat informal, market-based zoning. I’ve heard it can be difficult to develop there despite the lack of zoning because the negotiations between private parties don’t have clear and objective processes.
kthejoker2 4y ago
Minimal zoning has made Houston fantastic. Whatever mild downsides of mixed-use there has been, development, diversity, growth, opportunity, home value, and quality of life here is phenomenal. https://unherd.com/2022/04/texas-is-the-future/ https://unherd.com/2022/04/texas-is-the-future/ https://www.governing.com/community/houston-is-the-nations-most-diverse-city-report.html https://www.governing.com/community/houston-is-the-nations-m... https://marketurbanism.com/2022/03/14/houston-impressions/ https://marketurbanism.com/2022/03/14/houston-impressions/ https://houston.culturemap.com/news/real-estate/02-22-22-houston-first-single-family-permits-retail-space-storage-cafe/ https://houston.culturemap.com/news/real-estate/02-22-22-hou... https://youtu.be/Z0k7M_Xwx4k https://youtu.be/Z0k7M_Xwx4k

ajuc 4y ago

Police is racist in USA. Let's abolish the police. That will surely make things great. Zoning sucks in USA. Let's abolish zoning, then everything will be great. What's wrong with you people? Just fix what's broken. You don't throw away your home when a window is broken.

zip1234 4y ago
Police have no obvious replacement. Getting rid of zoning has obvious replacement, which is rules to regulate the negative externalities that zoning was supposed to address, but has failed miserably. I don't think anyone seriously advocating for getting rid of zoning doesn't have an idea for a replacement.
- ajuc 4y ago
  > rules to regulate the negative externalities that zoning was supposed to address, but has failed miserably But that's zoning? Zoning doesn't need to be "only suburbs allowed here" or "only factories allowed here". In fact zoning in Europe usually is the opposite: "if you want to build 1000 houses here you have to also build a school, a library, park, healthcare and a nursery within 3 km".
voisin 4y ago
> What’s wrong with you people? just fix what’s broken. The process for fixing is significantly more complicated than the process for starting fresh. Trying to make even minor changes gets bogged down in essentially the same magnitude of bureaucracy as starting from scratch. Endless public consultation, money interest lobbying, etc. the effort is almost never worth it for minor changes. Your attitude of incrementalism is, IMHO, why we can’t have nice things today. When something’s obviously broken, sometimes it is best to admit it was a failed experiment and try again.
- ajuc 4y ago
  > The process for fixing is significantly more complicated than the process for starting fresh. That's usually the opinion of people who didn't actually thought through the whole process of starting fresh. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...

ericd 4y ago

Maximum use zoning seems a lot better than no zoning. Most don’t want industrial or dirty/loud commercial mixed in with residential. At least not without seriously onerous emissions requirements.

ouid 4y ago

But without zoning and roads simcity would just be waiting.

endisneigh 4y ago

Go and vote - if the majority want it to happen it will

foreigner 4y ago

Olde world towns generally have more zoning (AKA "planning permission" in the UK), not less. America certainly has some zoning problems but abolishing it isn't the answer.

voisin 4y ago
Source? in what way are the planning permissions in the UK “more zoning” in the US? What else is regulated that is not in the US?
- foreigner 4y ago
  They're much more strict. If e.g. you want to add a room to your house you have to apply for permission, and then post a notice detailing what you're going to do in the street in front of your house to give your neighbors an opportunity to object. Source: I live here LOL
  - voisin 4y ago
    Add a room as in add an addition to your house? Or change the interior configuration? If the former, it is no different in the US if the zoning does not already allow for the expansion (I.e. as in the case of most suburban houses, the house is already built to the maximum size on the lot and the home owner needs a variance)

inamberclad 4y ago

Living in a city like Houston without conventional zoning means lots of great and interesting buildings, but it also means that the worst apartments get put right next to the highway, industrial facilities can be co-located with your residence, and transport and sidewalks are a nightmare. Zoning can and should be used for things like ensuring efficient highways and walking areas, and keeping people safe from pollutants. Too often though, it's used as an instrument of class warfare, keeping the overlap of affordable and nice as small as possible.

zip1234 4y ago
All of these things: "the worst apartments get put right next to the highway, industrial facilities can be co-located with your residence, and transport and sidewalks are a nightmare" happen in places with zoning. Houston is not perfect and certainly their transportation policy is not great, but zoning doesn't solve any of those. Lines on a map designating an industrial area and such seems so orderly, but in practice those zones have to butt against each other. Meaning it happens often that 'incompatible uses' go near each other. Zoning solves nothing about the real problems that zoning is supposed to solve, which is negative externalities like noise, traffic, etc. Those are best fixed with purpose built rules such as noise ordinances. Someone in a 'residential' neighborhood can have a car louder than an industrial plant. Zoning doesn't address that at all.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

ThomW 4y ago

lol no thanks. The author has obviously never been to Houston.

CaliforniaKarl 4y ago

The _Life Where I'm From_ episode on zoning in Japan is useful, I think, as a point of comparison. Zoning in Japan can still be pretty complex (limits on floorspace, setback, and angles), but allows for environments that many people like. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfm2xCKOCNk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfm2xCKOCNk

runxel 4y ago

Let me tell you: Zoning in itself is not a bad thing per se! Quite the contrary. I guess nearly all countries belonging to the "Global North" have them. And they do so for a reason. Tossing out zoning laws alltogether is just another nail in the ethically bankrupt city plannings coffin. Instead the zoning laws have to get better by revising their underlying premises. E.g. why the hell do you guys outlaw condos? In Germany we have a gradient on whats allowed and what not. The "BauNVO" (Baunutzungsverordnung) regulates that on a broad level. Then you will go to a more granular level, the "B-Plan" (Bebauungsplan). There it will have more regulations which have to be followed. E.g. it is very often the case that the ground level is reserved for commercial use, but on the other levels must be condos.

voisin 4y ago

In the town I am from a developer bought land to put up a tower. The zoning law was set in the 80s and allowed for added density in this particular area. The proposed development complied with that zoning and so the application process was straightforward and didn’t require a long drawn out combative process, and still there have been numerous articles and handwringing by politicians that it was unconscionable that this development could be approved by city staff without having to go through public commentary and consultation and a shakedown by politicians demanding a tithe for parks or public art. This world is insane. It never ceases to amazing me.

paulsutter 4y ago

One reason England is so beautiful, most of the country is zoned for agriculture and can’t be built up: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/land-cover-atlas-uk-1.744440 https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/land-cover-atlas-uk-1.74...

snidane 4y ago

Abolish and replace with what? How do you ensure that the outcome doesn't resemble post-soviet privatisations that are impossible to get undone within 100 years, if even that. It looks great on paper, until it doesn't in practice when it turns out there are bazillion ways to game an anarchic system which some "architect" assumed will self-govern. Discarding zoning, I can already see public parks getting converted to smelly pig farms and for profit cemeteries. Land is leased for infinite time durations, so very very hard to undo.

TimPC 4y ago

I think minimal zoning is much more viable than no zoning. It makes a lot of sense to preserve the hard line between industrial and residential zoning while blurring the line between residential and commercial zoning. No one wants factories and power plants springing up in residential areas and having insufficient zoning to prevent that would be a bad idea. But I live in a city where 70% of the city is zoned SFH. It's literally impossible for people to build 4-plexes, 6-plexes or low-rises in these residential neighborhoods. Montreal, allows for this while Toronto doesn't and it's a large part of the reason that housing in Montreal costs roughly half of housing in Toronto. Housing in Toronto costs over 10.5 years of average income in Toronto, which makes it only slightly more affordable than San Francisco where housing is around 11.5 years of average income. A large part of this is the city government does everything in their power to not build new housing while 300,000 new immigrants to come the city a year. Housing affordability is unbelievably poor and a sizeable percentage of residents pay for rent with money they need for food. Food bank usage is large and growing and the city is getting dramatically harder to live in for many of its residents. Surely there has to be something better.

foogazi 4y ago
> A large part of this is the city government does everything in their power to not build new housing while 300,000 new immigrants to come the city a year. Why do immigrants keep going to the city when it is so expensive?
- TimPC 4y ago
  Because the big city is where both existing communities from their country are and where the best jobs are.

smugma 4y ago

Isn’t the mass sprawl of Houston directly connected to its lack of zoning regulations?

NonNefarious 4y ago

Ugh. It's paywalled, but you can see the fallacies impending in the first paragraph, citing the past where corporations weren't buying up entire neighborhoods at once. The country is not "full." The bellyaching about zoning is really just shilling for developers.

NonNefarious 4y ago
Yes, mod facts you don't like down, Redditors. Or... inform yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEwxYvQVU5g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEwxYvQVU5g

Pxtl 4y ago

If you overlay maps of traffic accidents with age of buildings, you will see that post-war North American urban planning up until modern suburbia has had an atrocious effect on traffic safety. I can't think of any other profession that has collectively failed us as badly as urban planning, having simultaneously created a housing crisis, a climate change crisis, and a public health crisis. It's like medicine before Semmelweis.

hedora 4y ago

I can't read the article, but it's about California, and in California, zoning isn't the issue. The issue is abusive planning departments. It routinely takes over a year to get through permitting. During that time owners have to pay interest on the new place, insurance, and are also paying to retain architects, engineers, etc. Homeowners are randomly bankrupted by nonsensical environmental restrictions (examples: banning modern septic technologies, and tightening requirements for old style installs. Once a plot is subdivided and sold, declare it unbuildable. Demanding trenches being dug to test soil suitability for leachfields, then denying applications because the trench disturbed the soil. Some of this crap was recently banned, but just for accessory dwelling units (aka. mother in law cottages), so it's possible to reform the system, and there are even laws on the books that provide a blueprint.

cuteboy19 4y ago
>The issue is abusive planning departments Why are cities being "planned" anyways? So much hubris in thinking that you can plan better than the free market
- adrianN 4y ago
  Transaction costs in city development are very high and change takes forever. I doubt the "free market" (how free exactly?) would converge in reasonable time. I also find it plausible that the price of anarchy in city planning is very high. For example I doubt that the free market would ever build public transport.
Pxtl 4y ago
I can't speak for Cali, butt in Toronto the reason planning departments can be abusive is because of zoning. Every building is de jure illegal because of zoning, so every build requires a variance from the zoning and the official plan, resulting in a multi-year process of negotiations, public consultation, horse trading, adjudications, and delays. This means endless years of legal fees, filing fees, and carrying costs before they can build. The zoning and plan are what enables this sandbagging. Nothing is allowed as of right. Housing is only legal in the same way that murder is legal: it isn't but there's a process for getting a pardon.