10 ms·

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 store

• 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.
          • masklinn 4y ago
            And additional costs of means of transportation in order to be able to live there, because of exclusionary single-family zoning, residential areas are wastelands of nothing, essentially requiring a car per adult individual. This also significantly constrains people with mobility issues.
        • belligeront 4y ago
          The origins of zoning were to exclude black, Chinese, and jewish workers and residents from white neighborhoods. https://www.kqed.org/news/11840548/the-racist-history-of-single-family-home-zoning https://www.kqed.org/news/11840548/the-racist-history-of-sin... Today, they continue to be used to exclude poorer residents from richer neighborhoods through mechanisms like minimum lot sizes (housing is much more expensive if you require 10000 sqft lots, etc.) and prohibitions of multi-family dwellings (which make housing cheaper by allowing multiple households to split the cost of land).
          • JaimeThompson 4y ago
            He didn't say zoning, he said homes so I was asking them why a single family home was elitist.
            • ClumsyPilot 4y ago
              its clearly more expensive than the alternative. it excluded poorer people from the area
            • bobthepanda 4y ago
              The single family home zoning has the stuff like the minumum lot size and prohibitions on lot splitting or multiple homes on the same lot, which essentially sets a floor price to qualify for living there. And a minimum price will lead to minimum salary requirements for a mortgage, effectively locking out those below that income, hence elitism.
          • refurb 4y ago
            That doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t have to be a suburb to exclude non-whites. It could be an apartment building.
        • Pxtl 4y ago
          Ever seen a zoning consultation meeting to build multi-family residences in a single family detached neighborhood? The objections are wholly classist worries about What Kind of People are going to be living there.
        • zip1234 4y ago
          My city is holding public hearings about a new apartment development. People are outraged because it might bring in poor people.
      • tharne 4y ago
        > Suburban single-family homes are specifically an elitist policy. Prior to the widespread development of suburban single family homes post WWII, most Americans outside of those in rural areas could not afford to home their own home. Suburbs are the exact opposite of an elitist policy, and in fact the overwhelming majority of Americans, including a majority of immigrants, live in the suburbs.
        • nosianu 4y ago
          An anecdote from Nazi Germany from the town I grew up in. The Nazis did exactly the same! As part of their program - similar to what Putin wants to do now? - to become self-sufficient, among many other projects, they built a very large chemical fiber factory into the middle of underdeveloped Thuringia. That's the German state just above Bavaria. https://www.all-neumann.de/rud-zellwolle.html https://www.all-neumann.de/rud-zellwolle.html For the thousands of new workers, only some of which could be sourced from the local population, they build the equivalent to American suburbs, in 1935. A few pictures, old black and white: https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/item/H5NXR6CAX2MZ746Y4E25IVY4GFASRJ6J https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/item/H5NXR6CAX2M... https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/item/2GD55POKL3R735R4NG3JCRGG3AUJTBRE https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/item/2GD55POKL3R... https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/item/UNFBR42B35MR6UQGLNGJQRZJKB7BF2SG https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/item/UNFBR42B35M... The factory, by the way, even back in the 1930s included two olympic-size swimming pools, one heated (by the next door factory coal power plant) and one with waves: https://www.all-neumann.de/images3/Schwarza_119674.jpg https://www.all-neumann.de/images3/Schwarza_119674.jpg That suburb still exists, with a lot of kind of equal double-houses surrounded by a lot of garden. Google maps, you can see how all houses and plots are similar: https://www.google.com/maps/@50.6840376,11.3145743,413m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@50.6840376,11.3145743,413m/data... Until after reunification they could still walk for shopping in little stores, Schwarza, a tiny place at the edge of which the new houses were built, even had a butcher shop. To get to the factory could be done by bike leisurely within ten minutes. However, in my old hometown (Rudolstadt) industry and houses often were right next to one another. There were quite a few of those, and they were in the city or at the edges, next to houses and villas. There's an x-ray tube factory (https://new.siemens.com/global/en/company/about/history/stories/siemens-reiniger-werke.html https://new.siemens.com/global/en/company/about/history/stor...) and quite a few other industries, beginning early 20th century. I don't know if those various factories were at the edge of town in the 1920s, but even if they were, it can't have been very long that it all got a bit mixed. Today we have zoning too, kind of, "Gewerbegebiet" (industrial park) is where you have to go with your manufacturing business these days. We now have very similar discussions about more mixing, example (German): "Architect recommends more mixed use areas" -- https://www.nw.de/lokal/bielefeld/mitte/21979129_Architekt-empfiehlt-Wohn-und-Gewerbegebiete-mehr-zu-mischen.html https://www.nw.de/lokal/bielefeld/mitte/21979129_Architekt-e... But also the opposite, "Please don't mix" -- https://www.welt.de/print-welt/article518393/Bitte-nicht-mischen.html https://www.welt.de/print-welt/article518393/Bitte-nicht-mis...
      • flenserboy 4y ago
        No, they're not. Even if something bad is somewhere in an origin story, that doesn't taint the existence of a thing. Most of the complaining about suburbs comes from people who want people to live bunched together, ant-like lives. Should there be more room for small businesses in and around suburbs? You bet. Encouraging walkability, not having to drive forever to get groceries, etc., is useful. But this push to take away the freedom of people to not live on top of each other is another form of classism, one oriented toward the imposition of suffering rather than toward encouraging freedom.
        • cuteboy19 4y ago
          This is so absurd. Zoning involves so much central planning that it would put the Soviet Union to shame. Suppose you want to add an extra room to your house on your land that you ""own"" in this system. You would need to go prostrate yourself before some bureaucrat in city hall. Who then inevitably declines that variance because some busybody somewhere thought that it interferes with the ""neighborhood character"". How can we even say that you own your own land if you are not allowed to build on it as you please? Where is the freedom in any of this?
        • BirdieNZ 4y ago
          > But this push to take away the freedom of people to not live on top of each other is another form of classism This sounds like a ridiculous straw-man; who's pushing to take away freedom of people to not live on top of each other? People advocating for suburbs to pay their fair share of taxes, and for less car subsidy, and for less restrictive zoning are not restricting freedom but increasing it.
      • NonNefarious 4y ago
        No, they're not. They're a style of living that people can choose, and work to achieve. If you want to choose a different style, then do so; they're available. If you want high density, go live in a city center. But there's no reason to allow developers and corporations to destroy other types of neighborhoods that are ALREADY residential. This pro-developer/pro-corporate-ownership shilling is way past tired.
    • bandyaboot 4y ago
      More precisely, nearly all the people who can afford to live there like them just fine.
    • drewcoo 4y ago
      > If it's so horrible, why do so few people want to get rid of it? People fear change? And media reinforces that. Things suck now . . . but how much worse is the unknown? [cue scary music]
    • asveikau 4y ago
      Build a car centric life and then wonder why everyone is so stressed and obese. But the people are happy with it! Many of those people are conditioned to expect these things because it was considered progress and increasingly it's all that they can get, and I think have some blind spots that probably keep them from living their best life. Surely pointing this out is elitist.
      • justapassenger 4y ago
        There’s waaaay more reasons to why Americans are obese and stressed, than single family houses zoning.
        • goosedragons 4y ago
          Of course but requiring a car to do 95% of tasks surely doesn't help.
    • droidist2 4y ago
      The fact that the few dense cities in the US where you don't need to drive everywhere are ridiculously expensive would indicate there's more demand for these kinds of places than we're supplying.
      • treis 4y ago
        Your cause and effect is backwards. They're dense because they're expensive.
        • spacemanmatt 4y ago
          They're dense and expensive because they're desirable.
          • treis 4y ago
            Desirable for reasons independent of their density. You can't, as an example, replicate Manhattan in Upstate NY and expect people to flock there.
        • ClumsyPilot 4y ago
          if they were undesirable they woupd be cheaper than suburban properties. obviously the demand is there
        • nrr 4y ago
          I'm not sure I follow. Could you perhaps explain?
          • pandaman 4y ago
            You could make an argument that people like traveling packed like sardines because airlines flight most people this way and it's also an expensive way to travel. However it does not follow, it's likely that people like convenience of air travel and value it more than the abysmal accommodations. To wit, the richest people travel in roomy private planes with plenty of room and the less rich go with business/1st class, also allowing more room. Likewise, even the most expensive cities still have mansions in the middle of micro-apartments. If these cities really were valued for their density, the mansions would either be gone or would be cheaper than the surrounding dense dwellings.
    • nrr 4y ago
      Is this true? This fact isn't obvious to me.
      • belligeront 4y ago
        I don't think there is much evidence, since voters don't directly vote on this, but some points to no: - Houston voted against zoning on a public vote - Many people report wanting to live in more walkable neighborhoods - The few cities that have walkable, dense neighborhoods in the US are much more expensive than other cities and walkable neighborhoods are more expensive than non-walkable. This suggests that there is something limiting the supply of walkable neighborhoods (zoning).
    • rychco 4y ago
      This is an intentionally poor & misleading question. So few people want to get rid of it because so few people are even aware of what it is, why it’s bad, and how it affects their community.
      • tharne 4y ago
        > So few people want to get rid of it because so few people are even aware of what it is, why it’s bad, and how it affects their community. So you're going to convince us to abandon zoning using the the argument that it's bad but we're all just too stupid to know better? Good luck with that. A great many suburbanites lived in cities at one point in their life and decided to move out.
        • rychco 4y ago
          Nobody is too stupid to understand zoning, and I never suggested that was the case. I am saying that most people are entirely unaware how/why zoning occurs around them at all.
  • masklinn 4y ago
    > We can regulate where industrial use can exist as separate laws That's called zoning... e.g. maximum-nuisance (or maximum-use) zoning: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sV5ETXDs_8M/Ux-axBTuF2I/AAAAAAAAAsE/E6gs6uJr_8M/s1600/ZonageInclusifJ.JPG http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sV5ETXDs_8M/Ux-axBTuF2I/AAAAAAAAAs... > and get rid of the 97% of zoning that has been horrible for land use in the US It's not like the zoning policy which causes those issues is a huge amount of stuff, the issue with american zoning is that it's exclusionary: each zone can only have one use, and municipalities micromanage zones.
    • belligeront 4y ago
      It is a huge amount of stuff: parking minimums, minimum setbacks, minimum lot sizes, height limits, maximums on number of units, density, architectural style, etc., etc., etc. Zoning codes are massive and complex documents that require hugely specialized knowledge. And they are different in each municipality, so housing developers can't easily work across different municipalities. This also increases costs by making it harder to standardize building plans and use cheaper, more automated building techniques. Compare this with Japan which has a small set of zoning uses set at the national level.
      • NonNefarious 4y ago
        And they're packed in like sardines. People who want to live like that can go live in city centers. Zoning allows people to choose the type of neighborhood they want to live in. How are you going to accomplish that without it?
        • 0x53 4y ago
          So, if we allow people to live closer together there will somehow be less space? There will always be suburbs in America. If people want to live in the suburbs it will always be possible here. Zoning actually prevents people from living where they want to because only single family homes are allowed to be built.
          • 4y ago
  • thot_experiment 4y ago
    I'm not a zoning expert but this rings true to me, I recently spent some time back in europe and boy do I miss having a grocery store and a tram station 3 minutes walk away from my commie block in the suburbs. USA urban design is absolute trash.
    • dasv 4y ago
      I live in a commie block — well, fashy block since it's Spain — and although the zone is something that in the US would be seen as "the projects", the zone is nicer than the surrounding neighbourhood: well oriented blocks with plenty of light, no inner courtyards, surrounded by parks, minimal walls with neighbours, etc. Something is failing in city planning when the absolute cheapest houses that were built in a post war economy to house poor families were more thoughtfully designed than the rest of the area under city hall code.
  • amluto 4y ago
    I’ve seen one Bay Area use of zoning that I like. In Palo Alto, there are areas zoned for retail (which I think means retail or restaurant, but must be things that interact with customers who walk in). This helps for a somewhat odd reason: retail space is quite a bit less expensive than office space or housing, and property owners would often like to convert to office space. But doing so at scale would introduce a tragedy of the commons: office space is desirable in part because of the presence of retail! (I’m not saying the economics have to work this way — I can easily imagine that more relaxed zoning and development rules would equalize the values of different types of space. But in the mean time, this policy at least appears to benefit people who live or work in the area.)
• abirch 4y ago
  I was born and raised in farm county. You wouldn't want a pig farmer to move in next door. Yes too much zoning is a bad thing; too little is bad as well.
  • voisin 4y ago
    Arguably a pig farmer isn’t going to want to raise pigs on a suburban lot either. And many places already allow backyard chickens, bees etc. I don’t like how much my neighbour’s dog barks, but can you imagine if zoning prevented dog ownership? Why allow yappy dogs but not pigs? Is it just the number of animals or is it truly the type?
    • ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      you are missing the forest for the trees. zoning does not prohibit you from owning a pig as a pet. have you ever seen the kind of nutrient rich runoff a pig farm produces?
      • voisin 4y ago
        Ok, I agree with this, but in this case there is a direct impact to the adjacent landowner receiving this runoff. So regulate that. For some reason we craft all these laws to avoid the possibility of bad things happening, creating these broad dragnets that impact so many things unintentionally, rather than just regulating the thing we don’t want directly.
        • heretogetout 4y ago
          Runoff isn't the only concern. There's noise, big-rig traffic, odor, unappealing landscape (important to some). At some point it's a lot cheaper and easier to just regulate with zoning than to regulate each individual component of a site[0]. And frankly both sides -- residential and farmer -- should be happy to be away from each other. 0: Which, of course, developers would also object to and would lead to a lot of patchwork regulation due to grandfathering.
        • 4y ago
• drewcoo 4y ago
  I'm not falling for "think of the babies." There's a lot of bath water. Drain it. We'll be better off than now. We can talk about adding whatever zoning laws we actually need after this mess is cleaned up.
• imtringued 4y ago
  Americans haven't heard about hierarchical zoning. For them zoning means you can only do one thing and nothing else. This means you have a dedicated residential zone, dedicated commercial zone and dedicated industrial zone. Everything is far apart because the zones aren't mixed use. In most sane countries you can build low impact buildings in every zone, medium impact buildings (commercial real estate) in medium impact zones and above and high impact (industrial real estate) buildings in high impact zones. Yes, you can build your house near a factory but the factory can't be built near your house.
  • mint2 4y ago
    While the overall point is good, For more pollution prone industries it would be very risky not to prohibit housing next to it, otherwise it’s dooming poor people and their kids to health issues and early death. For example, battery recycler in the past have lead to massive heavy metal pollution in the vicinity. So for the most risky industrial facilities housing should be prohibited, but for all others yeah it should be mostly hierarchical.
    • ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      in Many EU contries a house has to meet sone limits on noise and other pollution or it will not be allowed to be sold as a residential property.
    • clairity 4y ago
      rather than arbitrary zoning rules and an implicit pass for such obvious and wanton pollution, those businesses should be regulated and heavily punished (too bad the supreme court made things like this harder not easier recently). that's a literal externality. it's the kind of thing where the corporate veil should be pierced mercilessly, and the executives and owners all held personally culpable. then it wouldn't matter who lived next door.
      • mint2 4y ago
        Theoretically and on paper that would be a nice proposition. Unfortunately we are humans. That will not work
• zip1234 4y ago
  There are way better ways than zoning to regulate negative externalities. For example, rather than blindly saying 'no commercial', a rule could regulate the bad parts of commercial, such as noise. Zoning is a blunt tool and pretty much fails at it's entire point.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • mulmen 4y ago
    How is “no noise” implemented if not ultimately through zoning? Sounds like you are arguing for higher resolution, not a new paradigm.
    • zip1234 4y ago
      Noise rules could be quiet hours between certain times, rules about measured decibels, etc.
      • mulmen 4y ago
        Sure but the rules can’t be the same everywhere. They vary based on your zone, literally. That’s the entire point. What you are describing is just zoning.
      • noirbot 4y ago
        Most places already have that, pretty much. It doesn't work, generally.
    • noirbot 4y ago
      It also puts the onus on policing. This is exactly the issue that people have with Airbnb and short term rentals. It's "evil" because it bypasses zoning because people "don't want to live next to a hotel or party". If you're not going to push for zoning, then you're asking for one-off governmental agents to decide when something has gone too far.
    • pantalaimon 4y ago
• jdasdf 4y ago
  I completely disagree, zoning is a negative in every sense, and the world would be a better place without it.