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Measuring the impact of zoning on housing in a city

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Re: Measuring the impact of zoning on housing in a city

#41

Post by renewiltord »

Angostura wrote: post #10
voisin wrote: post #4

> Planners do important work moulding how our cities grow. Lost me at the first sentence. Let me fix it: “Planners follow the flavour of the day while committing the same sins over and over, their failures recognizable only in retrospect once replaced with a new (also faulty) paradigm based on centralized planning. Despite their repeated failures, as an industry or field of study they show no contrition and continue…

What's your preferred solution? Laissez-faire development?

Whatever Tokyo is doing is nice. I liked it. Mixed use is fantastic.

Re: Measuring the impact of zoning on housing in a city

#42

Post by AnthonyMouse »

triceratops wrote: post #40
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't deduct depreciation on an owner-occupied house to begin with. The premise is that you're trying to distinguish between landlords and people who have a second home for themselves. But they can just rent it to a friend who in turn lets them use it. If they're buying multiple homes to rent out at market rates to the general public then they're just an ordinary landlord -- the thing that wouldn't be paying a ta…

I thought the tax on "second homes" was a tax on landlording and speculation, not a tax on vacation homes. I think we might just be talking past each other here.

Why would taxing landlords reduce housing costs? It just increases housing costs for landlords, and in turn renters, as landlords become unwilling to pay for new construction until rents increase to cover the tax.

Re: Measuring the impact of zoning on housing in a city

#43

Post by renewiltord »

boplicity wrote: post #13
Dig1t wrote: post #5

I personally tried to build more housing, I tried to buy 5 acres and build 5 homes on them. 5 acres could have easily held 5 large homes with big yards. The city zoning board denied me, saying that that 5-acre plot had been zoned for ONE house and an ADU of no larger than 300 sqft. That was when I realized why housing is so expensive.

In this case, it may not have just been that 5 acres was enough "room" for five houses. It gets into questions of building infrastructure for those houses -- sewers, water rights, etc. One development of 5 houses might not move the needle on that, but it then opens the door to neighbors doing the same thing, which could very much require major investment in infrastructure for the area.

How were any houses built at all originally? Surely there were no sewers once upon a time.

Re: Measuring the impact of zoning on housing in a city

#44

Post by screye »

philips wrote: post #6
voisin wrote: post #4

> Planners do important work moulding how our cities grow. Lost me at the first sentence. Let me fix it: “Planners follow the flavour of the day while committing the same sins over and over, their failures recognizable only in retrospect once replaced with a new (also faulty) paradigm based on centralized planning. Despite their repeated failures, as an industry or field of study they show no contrition and continue…

I have personally been involved in a few planning and “traffic engineering” issues where I live. And although this comment is heavy on the sarcasm it is very reflective of my experience. As a whole planning departments seem unable to defend decisions with relevant data and instead rely on indefensibly old manuals and standards. Some of which themselves use indefensible statistics- particularly traffic manuals (lets p…

Any profession whose communities disagree on the very building blocks of their discipline is not a science, but an art. Urban planning, architecture and economics toe that line.

Over the last century, economics has build some of the necessary concensus to move closer to a science and architecture has moved closer to art + compliance, leaving the rest to civil engineers.

But global urban planning communities remain at each other's throats, and if anything, have diverged even further.

Traffic engineering is a joke because Uber and Google Maps run better traffic simulations than any planning committee in the country. The science has been available to those who want to find it. It's avoidance by planning groups (not blaming the engineers so much as the overall organization) evokes the incompetence/malice comparison from Hanlons razor.

The Urban planning outcomes of the anglophone vs the rest of the 1st world might as well be spitting in each other's faces. Given similar policy goals, cultural values and weather....one of them is wrong.

And I know I have placed my bets.

Re: Measuring the impact of zoning on housing in a city

#45

Post by k99x55 »

voisin wrote: post #4

> Planners do important work moulding how our cities grow. Lost me at the first sentence. Let me fix it: “Planners follow the flavour of the day while committing the same sins over and over, their failures recognizable only in retrospect once replaced with a new (also faulty) paradigm based on centralized planning. Despite their repeated failures, as an industry or field of study they show no contrition and continue…

The Lively & Liveable Neighbourhoods that are Illegal in Most of North America : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnKIVX968PQ

The Suburbs Are Bleeding America Dry | Climate Town (feat. Not Just Bikes) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfsCniN7Nsc

Re: Measuring the impact of zoning on housing in a city

#46

Post by _DeadFred_ »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #21
boplicity wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, it may not have just been that 5 acres was enough "room" for five houses. It gets into questions of building infrastructure for those houses -- sewers, water rights, etc. One development of 5 houses might not move the needle on that, but it then opens the door to neighbors doing the same thing, which could very much require major investment in infrastructure for the area.

> One development of 5 houses might not move the needle on that, but it then opens the door to neighbors doing the same thing, which could very much require major investment in infrastructure for the area. But then there is a corresponding increase in property tax revenues to pay for it, so this should require no approval and just be something that happens. The city pays for the new infrastructure from the taxes paid…

So the city has to build a new $50 million dollar sewage treatment plant in the hopes of getting that paid back over 50 years of property taxes, and gets no say in the matter or the cities budget? Sewage treatment plants have finite capacity, can't be built on a 'serves 20 units' incremental scale, and oftentimes new plants have much stricter requirements than grandfathered in one. Not everywhere is the bay area where they can scale up by just piping it out a few miles into the ocean and call it good.

Re: Measuring the impact of zoning on housing in a city

#47

Post by returningfory2 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #29
swozey wrote: post #12

> Giving up some aesthetic control means creating a city much more like Tokyo where building heights differ markedly even on lots next door to each other. I've lived a ridiculous number of major USA cities and I'll never forget what Houston, which is the only one I can think of that had no zoning, looked like. https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Wei...

The main thing you actually want from zoning is to separate noxious/industrial uses from everything else. Houston is weird if it doesn't even do that. None of that other stuff is a problem. Living in a single-family home next to an office tower isn't any worse than living in a condo tower next to an office tower. People just aren't used to it because it's prohibited nearly anywhere else.

> Living in a single-family home next to an office tower isn't any worse than living in a condo tower next to an office tower.

By the way, this is very common in many Latin American countries such as Colombia. When you walk through these neighborhoods it's at first a bit odd because you're not used to seeing single family homes next to towers (coming from the US at least). But then you realize it's totally fine and the neighborhoods are in many cases really really nice.

I feel like one partial solution for NIMBY brain is travelling to cities in other countries and seeing things are different and realizing that it's actually totally fine.

Re: Measuring the impact of zoning on housing in a city

#48

Post by AnthonyMouse »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #46
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One development of 5 houses might not move the needle on that, but it then opens the door to neighbors doing the same thing, which could very much require major investment in infrastructure for the area. But then there is a corresponding increase in property tax revenues to pay for it, so this should require no approval and just be something that happens. The city pays for the new infrastructure from the taxes paid…

So the city has to build a new $50 million dollar sewage treatment plant in the hopes of getting that paid back over 50 years of property taxes, and gets no say in the matter or the cities budget? Sewage treatment plants have finite capacity, can't be built on a 'serves 20 units' incremental scale, and oftentimes new plants have much stricter requirements than grandfathered in one. Not everywhere is the bay area wher…

> So the city has to build a new $50 million dollar sewage treatment plant in the hopes of getting that paid back over 50 years of property taxes, and gets no say in the matter or the cities budget?

Precisely.

> Sewage treatment plants have finite capacity, can't be built on a 'serves 20 units' incremental scale

Nor would they need to be. If your sewage treatment plant has a capacity for 100,000 units and you have 99,981 existing units, you already need a new sewage treatment plant regardless of where you put the new units, unless your plan is to never approve any new construction anywhere in the city, which is manifestly unreasonable.

> and oftentimes new plants have much stricter requirements than grandfathered in one.

And whose doing is that?

Re: Measuring the impact of zoning on housing in a city

#49

Post by 8note »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #24
Workaccount2 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> by taxing / fining people for having a second home. I don't see the issue with this? The profits in Canadian real estate are not on the back of some new found resource. It's entirely an effective wealth redistribution from have-nots to haves. If you have property, the vast amount of value in it is strictly from the fact that it is artificially scarce. To get into the "haves" you have to pay an artificial tax in the…

> I don't see the issue with this? Consider the incentives the government has created here. You can't build new housing, or it's extremely expensive because it's limited to specific lots and then you have to buy out whatever happens to be there even if they don't want to sell, and destroy a 5 story building in order to build a 10 story building, doubling costs while halving the increase in housing. Housing is thereby…

The owner of a second home isn't a supplier though, they're a hoarder

Re: Measuring the impact of zoning on housing in a city

#50

Post by maxsilver »

Dig1t wrote: post #5

I personally tried to build more housing, I tried to buy 5 acres and build 5 homes on them. 5 acres could have easily held 5 large homes with big yards. The city zoning board denied me, saying that that 5-acre plot had been zoned for ONE house and an ADU of no larger than 300 sqft. That was when I realized why housing is so expensive.

Where are you? Generally you can petition for re-zoning, as long as your lot is urban enough to have proper power/water/sewer infrastructure, and meets the hypothetically split requirements. (They allow it maybe ~90% of the time here in Michigan)
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