3 ms·

I feel like land use policies make everything expensive and everything except parking lots and gas stations rare.

by brailsafe 3y ago

HPsquared 3y ago
In my city at least, parking is in perpetual short supply.
- antognini 3y ago
  That is because it is underpriced.
  - magicalhippo 3y ago
    A city here in Norway had issues because rich people would just pay the $75 fine instead of following the parking regulations (ie time limits). Somehow repeat offenses did not escalate the punishment.
  - kgermino 3y ago
    Or they have unstated standards. People will regularly complain that my city (Milwaukee) doesn’t have enough parking when they really mean parking that is some combination of free, on street and adjacent to their destination. Which… sure but there’s a $5 garage a block away with 300 empty spaces. There is an issue in some areas where most to all of the parking spaces are privately owned and not publicly offered at any price but in theory a culture of paying a fair price to store your large personal property would encourage those private holders to offer spaces up to the public and solve that issue too
    - bombcar 3y ago
      Something that can solve this issue is removing the free spaces entirely. If all parking is a minimum of $5, then the garage is fine. But if there are SOME free spaces, people will circle to blocks for hours trying to find one. People are weird.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Housing is in short supply, too, because it is underpriced. (There's something of a way that this may be true, but people won't like it.)
    - brailsafe 3y ago
      Interestingly it's easier in most markets for people to buy more of a scarce supply of houses at any price than it is for the same person to occupy parking spaces. I know you're being a bit facetious, but housing is a fundamentally more complex component of the economy, as well as being the easiest plaything of people with money; the only way housing wouldn't be so expensive is if most places never put constraints in place in terms of building, while putting serious constraints on buying. Much like trying to out-exercise a diet of cookies and fudge won't work, out-building an endless source of capital that wants to bank on renters having no choice is a losing game. We need a lack of dampers on one side, and huge dampers on the other.
smallmancontrov 3y ago
That's the idea. Gotta pump that land value!
- NewJazz 3y ago
  How is a slab of asphalt or concrete, optionally with corrosive/toxic chemicals stored in underground containers, maximizing the value of the land? Something must be really fucked if that is what our society truly incentivizes.
  - ipaddr 3y ago
    That represents travel and allows the average person to visit places in the city. Like having a bike rack.
    - NewJazz 3y ago
      Bike rack, sidewalk, or parking lot... The value of that land is in people wanting to travel to and from it. Notice how all the national car parks are near forests and other nature-y places.
  - drozycki 3y ago
    The idea is that the politically active homeowners follow their self interest when they support policy which discourages new housing construction, driving scarcity in the housing market to raise prices.
  - smallmancontrov 3y ago
    Whenever you see the word "value," the critical question is "who's value." In the case of capitalism, it is wealth-weighted-people. In order to understand how the world works, picture a random sample of 10 wealth-weighted-people and ask yourself whether or not (screwball action) benefits them.
zbrozek 3y ago
We would do well as a nation to overturn Euclid v. Ambler. That Supreme Court decision was a mistake.
- r00fus 3y ago
  I mean, I think throwing out all zoning may be an over-step. I sure as hell don't want a chicken factory built next to my residence. However, a scale-back of zoning (like what CA state recently did - threatening the "builder's remedy" on cities/counties that didn't plan to expand housing appropriately) is probably a good idea. CA also recently made it easier to basically convert SFH to essentially 6-plexes (cost is an issue, so it's not an immediate fix). The major issue with most of America's woes has to do with us being an effective oligarchy and money having more say on what goes on than what most people want.
  - zbrozek 3y ago
    That's not what Euclid v. Ambler did, however. We had controls on legitimate health and safety concerns (e.g., pollution) prior to that ruling. The ruling dramatically increased the scope of police powers expressly and specifically against housing - things like floor area ratio, setbacks, number of habitable units, heights - that had not been within that scope before. It was unabashedly racist and classist, even in the text of the opinion.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

I feel like land use policies make everything expensive and everything except parking lots and gas stations rare.

HPsquared 3y ago

In my city at least, parking is in perpetual short supply.

antognini 3y ago
That is because it is underpriced.
- magicalhippo 3y ago
  A city here in Norway had issues because rich people would just pay the $75 fine instead of following the parking regulations (ie time limits). Somehow repeat offenses did not escalate the punishment.
- kgermino 3y ago
  Or they have unstated standards. People will regularly complain that my city (Milwaukee) doesn’t have enough parking when they really mean parking that is some combination of free, on street and adjacent to their destination. Which… sure but there’s a $5 garage a block away with 300 empty spaces. There is an issue in some areas where most to all of the parking spaces are privately owned and not publicly offered at any price but in theory a culture of paying a fair price to store your large personal property would encourage those private holders to offer spaces up to the public and solve that issue too
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Something that can solve this issue is removing the free spaces entirely. If all parking is a minimum of $5, then the garage is fine. But if there are SOME free spaces, people will circle to blocks for hours trying to find one. People are weird.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Housing is in short supply, too, because it is underpriced. (There's something of a way that this may be true, but people won't like it.)
  - brailsafe 3y ago
    Interestingly it's easier in most markets for people to buy more of a scarce supply of houses at any price than it is for the same person to occupy parking spaces. I know you're being a bit facetious, but housing is a fundamentally more complex component of the economy, as well as being the easiest plaything of people with money; the only way housing wouldn't be so expensive is if most places never put constraints in place in terms of building, while putting serious constraints on buying. Much like trying to out-exercise a diet of cookies and fudge won't work, out-building an endless source of capital that wants to bank on renters having no choice is a losing game. We need a lack of dampers on one side, and huge dampers on the other.

smallmancontrov 3y ago

That's the idea. Gotta pump that land value!

NewJazz 3y ago
How is a slab of asphalt or concrete, optionally with corrosive/toxic chemicals stored in underground containers, maximizing the value of the land? Something must be really fucked if that is what our society truly incentivizes.
- ipaddr 3y ago
  That represents travel and allows the average person to visit places in the city. Like having a bike rack.
  - NewJazz 3y ago
    Bike rack, sidewalk, or parking lot... The value of that land is in people wanting to travel to and from it. Notice how all the national car parks are near forests and other nature-y places.
- drozycki 3y ago
  The idea is that the politically active homeowners follow their self interest when they support policy which discourages new housing construction, driving scarcity in the housing market to raise prices.
- smallmancontrov 3y ago
  Whenever you see the word "value," the critical question is "who's value." In the case of capitalism, it is wealth-weighted-people. In order to understand how the world works, picture a random sample of 10 wealth-weighted-people and ask yourself whether or not (screwball action) benefits them.

zbrozek 3y ago

We would do well as a nation to overturn Euclid v. Ambler. That Supreme Court decision was a mistake.

r00fus 3y ago
I mean, I think throwing out all zoning may be an over-step. I sure as hell don't want a chicken factory built next to my residence. However, a scale-back of zoning (like what CA state recently did - threatening the "builder's remedy" on cities/counties that didn't plan to expand housing appropriately) is probably a good idea. CA also recently made it easier to basically convert SFH to essentially 6-plexes (cost is an issue, so it's not an immediate fix). The major issue with most of America's woes has to do with us being an effective oligarchy and money having more say on what goes on than what most people want.
- zbrozek 3y ago
  That's not what Euclid v. Ambler did, however. We had controls on legitimate health and safety concerns (e.g., pollution) prior to that ruling. The ruling dramatically increased the scope of police powers expressly and specifically against housing - things like floor area ratio, setbacks, number of habitable units, heights - that had not been within that scope before. It was unabashedly racist and classist, even in the text of the opinion.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]