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> If you don't want to deal with living near other people, move to the country. The reverse could also be said - if you don't want to deal with people deciding

> If you don't want to deal with living near other people, move to the country. The reverse could also be said - if you don't want to deal with people deciding together that they want their community to have certain guidelines, move to the country. You can do pretty much whatever you want in rural areas without significantly impacting your neighbors. People living together in a small area do get to decide together what they want that area to be like within reason. Creating some guidelines to create a desirable, pleasant and safe environment for them and their families is totally reasonable and has been the historical norm for most of the history of civilization. Of course things can get out of hand and over-reaching. If the people decide together to change it though, they can. I don't think the solution is just nuking all zoning regulations from orbit.

jeffbee 4y ago
Where this breaks down is cities that do not even have space for their own offspring. Again sticking with my own city of Berkeley, demographic processes, birth rate combined with increasing longevity, means that Berkeley has been exporting young people for 50 years, causing housing crises in those places, too. In what way is that equitable to either the offspring in question or the people who already lived in the other places?
- AdrianB1 4y ago
  All developed countries have negative demographic growth, if people want to get into very few places this does not make it right. At the opposite end you find the example of hundreds of villages in Italy that are deserted (and many more in less famous countries), do you say they are also exporting population?
thepasswordis 4y ago
Again this is where we are getting into what it means to own something. Do I own the property or not? If my neighbors want to get together and buy my house from me because they want to do something with it, then they are by all means allowed to do so.
- rjbwork 4y ago
  Nobody in the US, and indeed most of the world, "owns" their property. Try not paying your property taxes, and see where that gets you. You lease the right to usus, mostly fructus, and to some extent abusus from the state.
  - avereveard 4y ago
    Even then that would mean that the state would have a voice, not the neighbors.
  - notch898a 4y ago
    False, much of Alaska has no property tax.
    - rjbwork 4y ago
      Fair enough. I have looked into this before and that exception has not come up before. Let's say roughly 99.7%+ of people, then.
    - throwanem 4y ago
      Where does title revert if you die intestate and with no next of kin?
      - jonhohle 4y ago
        It goes to probate like any other property.
  - RealityVoid 4y ago
    I feel that this is a misleading. Property taxes are not leases on property but simply a disincentive to hoarding unused land.
    - rjbwork 4y ago
      Maybe in theory, but functionally it is the same. You don't pay your property taxes, you get a lien, and can eventually, in extreme circumstances, be foreclosed on.
bootsmann 4y ago
> I don't think the solution is just nuking all zoning regulations from orbit. It has to be, because the in-group, i.e. the people already living there don't accrue the cost as that falls on the out-group, the people who need to live there (job etc) but cannot. Its the essence of a "f** you i got mine attitude"
- notch898a 4y ago
  Same thing with building codes. Make them more onerous to increase construction costs. Then lol all the way to the bank when you grandfather your own house in, increasing your own property value as it is now impossible to build a house as economically as your own. Sprinkle in some "think of the safety of the children" for good measure, no matter the fact your own house is justified as safe enough to stand.
- golemotron 4y ago
  In-group/out-group aren't great terms to use to make that point. I and many others who don't live in the Bay Area see ourselves as an in-group relative our out-group -- the people who have to live there.
- nlavezzo 4y ago
  To be clear, my comment was more a reaction to what I perceived as the idea that any zoning of residential areas by the community that lives there is unacceptable and that you should be able to do literally anything that's not actively endangering your neighbors. That would result in most neighborhoods being much less pleasant due to a few owners deciding to do things against the interests of the many. I think the "community" can also extend to something as large as California. If California as a community decides it's in the best interest of that community to loosen some zoning restrictions in particularly high demand areas, fine. Do it with thoughtfulness and as much respect for existing owners' interests as possible while still accomplishing the desired objective. That's similar to a smaller community deciding to change the rules to account for some new undesirable behavior of certain community members.
- nostromo 4y ago
  San Francisco is 2/3rds renters, all of whom can vote. You shouldn't pretend that they have no say in how their city is run. If they want more rentals and more density, they have the power to vote for people who can make it happen. Instead they vote for people who talk a lot about preserving the character of San Francisco.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> don't want to deal with people deciding together that they want their community to have certain guidelines, move to the country Shouldn’t this be the message to a suburban homeowner clinging to the past? Move to the country. Buy land around you. Don’t tell others what they can and cannot do on property you don’t own.
- jakelazaroff 4y ago
  I mean… there's a balance, right? People should be able to mostly do what they want with their own property. At the same time, they should be able to come together to make collective decisions about their towns/cities/neighborhoods. Each of those has a bad outcome if taken to the extreme.
  - bluGill 4y ago
    Sure, but we should apply 'strict scrutiny' to that. Strict scrutiny is a legal term meaning in general that isn't a right the community should have, but we will make exceptions for really bad things only. (you have free speech, but you can't just yell fire in a crowded area. There are things you cannot do on your land, but they should be very limited.
  - CogitoCogito 4y ago
    > At the same time, they should be able to come together to make collective decisions about their towns/cities/neighborhoods. That's exactly what's happening here. Californians have collectively decided that zoning laws need to change. If the current actions by the state are somehow unreasonable, how could the original zoning provisions ever have been considered reasonable in the first place?
- lovecg 4y ago
  Devil’s advocate: they did. 50+ years ago they moved to a sleepy suburban town that through no fault of their own became a center of a worldwide tech revolution. Things change, sometimes dramatically. A place in the country you move to today can also transform 50 years in the future if you’re unlucky.
macspoofing 4y ago
>If the people decide together to change it though, they can. And they did. The decision by the people was to "nuke" current zoning regulations.
arcticbull 4y ago
This is America, land of the free, home of the property rights. It's a weird imposition to say that I can't build exactly what I want on my property (assuming it's safe). It's a totally fair thing to say that if you want full control over what can be built adjacent to your house buy a ranch in Montana. Don't want a skyscraper in downtown SF? Buy the plot. Can't afford it? Sorry, you're getting neighbors. You shouldn't try and bog them down with a nightmare bureaucratic process of shade measurement and bird counting. It's a good thing.
- oreoftw 4y ago
  What’s wrong with the alternative of sane zoning instead of “just buy the plot”? All people want is to live in a quiet and a nice place after all. Why someone who doesn’t even live there but has a bigger buck should decide?
  - arcticbull 4y ago
    > What’s wrong with the alternative of sane zoning instead of “just buy the plot”? Honestly, this is sane zoning. The Japanese model is very effective. They saw roughly 0% growth in housing prices from 1990 to present. Housing in downtown Tokyo is affordable. You'll be hard pressed to find someone who thinks Tokyo is an abomination, it's a top-10 world city is basically every ranking. > All people want is to live in a quiet and a nice place after all. Some of them! Not all of them. Some of them want a place to live within an hour of work, and for them that's more important. For those that want that they can (a) buy the land around them necessary to make that happen (b) lobby the city around them to buy the land necessary to make that happen (a 'park') or (c) move somewhere like-minded people live. > Why someone who doesn’t even live there but has a bigger buck should decide? Why should the person who got there first decide what other people get to do? That's not even democracy, that's just gerontocracy.
    - Xeronate 4y ago
      I think many people would consider Tokyo an overbuilt hellscape and never want to live there. I much prefer Santa Monica.
curiousllama 4y ago
An important caveat here is that these small groups are only "nuked from orbit" for the time period that they're out of compliance with a law that has existed for 50 years. I totally agree that "people living together in a small area" can pretty much do what they want. The only issue is when that starts to screw over other folks, and when all the other small areas get together to do the same. Then it's pretty reasonable for the state to go "you can't just never build houses. That's a decision that screws the rest of the state" and enforce that decision
- nlavezzo 4y ago
  > Then it's pretty reasonable for the state to go "you can't just never build houses. That's a decision that screws the rest of the state" and enforce that decision Totally agree. The state or larger city, etc. is also a community that should be able to make rules that promote the welfare of the great majority over the objections of a small minority, as long as they take care to not harm the small minority unnecessarily. I just think the solution is thoughtful modification of existing codes, possibly forced by larger jurisdictions, and not just a free for all where almost anything goes as was proposed by the parent commenter.
scythe 4y ago
>People living together in a small area do get to decide together what they want that area to be like within reason. This argument ignores 100 years of research in game theory and development economics. No community is an island, okay except Alameda, but even they are a component of a wider metropolis. The way you set zoning laws and transportation infrastructure influences who comes into and passes through your community — no municipality in the core of a metropolitan area can ever truly behave like a single community organizing its residents' lifestyles. So you see, for example, an attempt to increase the total property value per resident because it leads to a better school district. You see attempts to block new developments and transit stops because relative popularity may transiently increase the local cost of living, even if it benefits the affordability of the metro as a whole. You see militarized police departments who realize they can't outrun crime but they can certainly outrun Emeryville. None of these are the products of a community of people democratically deciding what kind of lifestyle fits their particular interests. They are the choices of a faction jockeying for status in the desperate power struggle that characterizes the great modern balkanized American Combined Statistical Area.
nvrmnd 4y ago
Is this a question of jurisdiction? I mean the people living together in a slightly larger area get to decide together what they want the collective area to be like as well right? Surely local politics can be overruled when the policies start having a material effect on individuals outside of the local jurisdiction.
grumple 4y ago
Which sounds well and good until you learn that the zoning laws we have are mostly a result of attempting to keep neighborhoods white.
closeparen 4y ago
So you can live in the actual countryside, or the population center curated to be like countryside. So many choices! What about those of us who actually want to live in cities? The only way cities come to be is incrementally; if an already-settled place cannot intensify then cities cannot exist.

jeffbee 4y ago

Where this breaks down is cities that do not even have space for their own offspring. Again sticking with my own city of Berkeley, demographic processes, birth rate combined with increasing longevity, means that Berkeley has been exporting young people for 50 years, causing housing crises in those places, too. In what way is that equitable to either the offspring in question or the people who already lived in the other places?

AdrianB1 4y ago
All developed countries have negative demographic growth, if people want to get into very few places this does not make it right. At the opposite end you find the example of hundreds of villages in Italy that are deserted (and many more in less famous countries), do you say they are also exporting population?

thepasswordis 4y ago

Again this is where we are getting into what it means to own something. Do I own the property or not? If my neighbors want to get together and buy my house from me because they want to do something with it, then they are by all means allowed to do so.

rjbwork 4y ago
Nobody in the US, and indeed most of the world, "owns" their property. Try not paying your property taxes, and see where that gets you. You lease the right to usus, mostly fructus, and to some extent abusus from the state.
- avereveard 4y ago
  Even then that would mean that the state would have a voice, not the neighbors.
- notch898a 4y ago
  False, much of Alaska has no property tax.
  - rjbwork 4y ago
    Fair enough. I have looked into this before and that exception has not come up before. Let's say roughly 99.7%+ of people, then.
  - throwanem 4y ago
    Where does title revert if you die intestate and with no next of kin?
    - jonhohle 4y ago
      It goes to probate like any other property.
- RealityVoid 4y ago
  I feel that this is a misleading. Property taxes are not leases on property but simply a disincentive to hoarding unused land.
  - rjbwork 4y ago
    Maybe in theory, but functionally it is the same. You don't pay your property taxes, you get a lien, and can eventually, in extreme circumstances, be foreclosed on.

bootsmann 4y ago

> I don't think the solution is just nuking all zoning regulations from orbit. It has to be, because the in-group, i.e. the people already living there don't accrue the cost as that falls on the out-group, the people who need to live there (job etc) but cannot. Its the essence of a "f** you i got mine attitude"

notch898a 4y ago
Same thing with building codes. Make them more onerous to increase construction costs. Then lol all the way to the bank when you grandfather your own house in, increasing your own property value as it is now impossible to build a house as economically as your own. Sprinkle in some "think of the safety of the children" for good measure, no matter the fact your own house is justified as safe enough to stand.
golemotron 4y ago
In-group/out-group aren't great terms to use to make that point. I and many others who don't live in the Bay Area see ourselves as an in-group relative our out-group -- the people who have to live there.
nlavezzo 4y ago
To be clear, my comment was more a reaction to what I perceived as the idea that any zoning of residential areas by the community that lives there is unacceptable and that you should be able to do literally anything that's not actively endangering your neighbors. That would result in most neighborhoods being much less pleasant due to a few owners deciding to do things against the interests of the many. I think the "community" can also extend to something as large as California. If California as a community decides it's in the best interest of that community to loosen some zoning restrictions in particularly high demand areas, fine. Do it with thoughtfulness and as much respect for existing owners' interests as possible while still accomplishing the desired objective. That's similar to a smaller community deciding to change the rules to account for some new undesirable behavior of certain community members.
nostromo 4y ago
San Francisco is 2/3rds renters, all of whom can vote. You shouldn't pretend that they have no say in how their city is run. If they want more rentals and more density, they have the power to vote for people who can make it happen. Instead they vote for people who talk a lot about preserving the character of San Francisco.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> don't want to deal with people deciding together that they want their community to have certain guidelines, move to the country Shouldn’t this be the message to a suburban homeowner clinging to the past? Move to the country. Buy land around you. Don’t tell others what they can and cannot do on property you don’t own.

jakelazaroff 4y ago
I mean… there's a balance, right? People should be able to mostly do what they want with their own property. At the same time, they should be able to come together to make collective decisions about their towns/cities/neighborhoods. Each of those has a bad outcome if taken to the extreme.
- bluGill 4y ago
  Sure, but we should apply 'strict scrutiny' to that. Strict scrutiny is a legal term meaning in general that isn't a right the community should have, but we will make exceptions for really bad things only. (you have free speech, but you can't just yell fire in a crowded area. There are things you cannot do on your land, but they should be very limited.
- CogitoCogito 4y ago
  > At the same time, they should be able to come together to make collective decisions about their towns/cities/neighborhoods. That's exactly what's happening here. Californians have collectively decided that zoning laws need to change. If the current actions by the state are somehow unreasonable, how could the original zoning provisions ever have been considered reasonable in the first place?
lovecg 4y ago
Devil’s advocate: they did. 50+ years ago they moved to a sleepy suburban town that through no fault of their own became a center of a worldwide tech revolution. Things change, sometimes dramatically. A place in the country you move to today can also transform 50 years in the future if you’re unlucky.

macspoofing 4y ago

>If the people decide together to change it though, they can. And they did. The decision by the people was to "nuke" current zoning regulations.

arcticbull 4y ago

This is America, land of the free, home of the property rights. It's a weird imposition to say that I can't build exactly what I want on my property (assuming it's safe). It's a totally fair thing to say that if you want full control over what can be built adjacent to your house buy a ranch in Montana. Don't want a skyscraper in downtown SF? Buy the plot. Can't afford it? Sorry, you're getting neighbors. You shouldn't try and bog them down with a nightmare bureaucratic process of shade measurement and bird counting. It's a good thing.

oreoftw 4y ago
What’s wrong with the alternative of sane zoning instead of “just buy the plot”? All people want is to live in a quiet and a nice place after all. Why someone who doesn’t even live there but has a bigger buck should decide?
- arcticbull 4y ago
  > What’s wrong with the alternative of sane zoning instead of “just buy the plot”? Honestly, this is sane zoning. The Japanese model is very effective. They saw roughly 0% growth in housing prices from 1990 to present. Housing in downtown Tokyo is affordable. You'll be hard pressed to find someone who thinks Tokyo is an abomination, it's a top-10 world city is basically every ranking. > All people want is to live in a quiet and a nice place after all. Some of them! Not all of them. Some of them want a place to live within an hour of work, and for them that's more important. For those that want that they can (a) buy the land around them necessary to make that happen (b) lobby the city around them to buy the land necessary to make that happen (a 'park') or (c) move somewhere like-minded people live. > Why someone who doesn’t even live there but has a bigger buck should decide? Why should the person who got there first decide what other people get to do? That's not even democracy, that's just gerontocracy.
  - Xeronate 4y ago
    I think many people would consider Tokyo an overbuilt hellscape and never want to live there. I much prefer Santa Monica.

curiousllama 4y ago

An important caveat here is that these small groups are only "nuked from orbit" for the time period that they're out of compliance with a law that has existed for 50 years. I totally agree that "people living together in a small area" can pretty much do what they want. The only issue is when that starts to screw over other folks, and when all the other small areas get together to do the same. Then it's pretty reasonable for the state to go "you can't just never build houses. That's a decision that screws the rest of the state" and enforce that decision

nlavezzo 4y ago
> Then it's pretty reasonable for the state to go "you can't just never build houses. That's a decision that screws the rest of the state" and enforce that decision Totally agree. The state or larger city, etc. is also a community that should be able to make rules that promote the welfare of the great majority over the objections of a small minority, as long as they take care to not harm the small minority unnecessarily. I just think the solution is thoughtful modification of existing codes, possibly forced by larger jurisdictions, and not just a free for all where almost anything goes as was proposed by the parent commenter.

scythe 4y ago

>People living together in a small area do get to decide together what they want that area to be like within reason. This argument ignores 100 years of research in game theory and development economics. No community is an island, okay except Alameda, but even they are a component of a wider metropolis. The way you set zoning laws and transportation infrastructure influences who comes into and passes through your community — no municipality in the core of a metropolitan area can ever truly behave like a single community organizing its residents' lifestyles. So you see, for example, an attempt to increase the total property value per resident because it leads to a better school district. You see attempts to block new developments and transit stops because relative popularity may transiently increase the local cost of living, even if it benefits the affordability of the metro as a whole. You see militarized police departments who realize they can't outrun crime but they can certainly outrun Emeryville. None of these are the products of a community of people democratically deciding what kind of lifestyle fits their particular interests. They are the choices of a faction jockeying for status in the desperate power struggle that characterizes the great modern balkanized American Combined Statistical Area.

nvrmnd 4y ago

Is this a question of jurisdiction? I mean the people living together in a slightly larger area get to decide together what they want the collective area to be like as well right? Surely local politics can be overruled when the policies start having a material effect on individuals outside of the local jurisdiction.

grumple 4y ago

Which sounds well and good until you learn that the zoning laws we have are mostly a result of attempting to keep neighborhoods white.

closeparen 4y ago

So you can live in the actual countryside, or the population center curated to be like countryside. So many choices! What about those of us who actually want to live in cities? The only way cities come to be is incrementally; if an already-settled place cannot intensify then cities cannot exist.