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Ask HN: Why not rezone all private land to allow unlimited housing construction?
- eesmith 4y agoI'll take your "unlimited" allows limits, like: - cannot block views for other buildings (eg, a "spite house") - "right to light" laws like in England and Japan, or more generally restrictions on preventing sky exposure (eg, the 1916 Zoning Resolution in New York). - protection of historical or archaeological sites, wildlife, landscape, etc. - must build with enough basic services for the residents, eg, ensure there is enough long-term access to water for new housing in Arizona, that sufficient transport is available, There are some places where I would want prohibition on housing construction, like in risky flood zones or near certain industrial plants. Paris uses its zoning abilities "to concentrate high density office buildings in the district of La Défense rather than allow heritage buildings across the city to be demolished to make way for them", though that's not concerning housing. They've also prohibited buildings over seven stories high in the city center, which prohibits unlimited housing in that area. (Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoning .) Those seem like good reasons to not rezone all private land to allow unlimited housing construction. Instead, the discussions I've seen start with abolishing single-family-only housing zones, as has been done in various places, rather than abolish all housing zoning restrictions. See also the previous, sometimes heated, zoning stories on HN, at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=zoning&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- endisneigh 4y agoWhy? Anyway, same reason we don't rezone all houses to be boarding houses
- eesmith 4y ago"Allow" doesn't mean "require", which is what "rezone all houses to be boarding houses" comes across as meaning, so I don't see those as being the same.
- endisneigh 4y agoI didn’t say anything about requiring houses to be boarding houses, rather that they are zoned to be them
- eesmith 4y agoI find it hard understand how a house can be zoned to be a boarding house. Do you mean that it's just a label? Can a house be zoned to be a wetland, without changing the house itself? In any case, I think the intent of the question is more equivalent to "allow boarding houses in all residential zoning" not "require".
- endisneigh 4y agohttps://www.planning.org/pas/reports/report105.htm https://www.planning.org/pas/reports/report105.htm Not sure why you keep mentioning require, I never said that to begin with.
- eesmith 4y agoBecause I see a difference between 1) "rezone all houses to be boarding houses", and 2) "rezone to allow all houses to be boarding houses". The first one sounds like a require, the second sounds like an optional. Like, "rezone all houses to be agricultural" would be a very different than "rezone to allow agricultural use." That link you pointed to wants to prohibit group living arrangements ("the loopholes [that permit group living arrangements] are still there. A few simple amendments can, by eliminating the loopholes, insure effective zoning"). It's absolutely does not want to rezone to allow boarding houses in R-1 single-family zones.
- _448 4y agoShhh...don't say that loudly in the UK :)
- marssaxman 4y agoTokyo seems to have a good system, just shy of this.
- schwartzworld 4y agoLots of cities limit subdividing your property because they want to keep property values high. Affordable housing brings in the riff raff.