521–530 of 1001 posts
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Yes, people here celebrating this don't understand at all that all this does is give developers more power over communities they have no interest in but money. And of course, the politicians that they will fund/bribe to make this happen. We just went from democracy to oligarchy in this case.
holy shit I love oligarchy now
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There are a myriad of ways Houston does control land use beyond zoning such as minimum parking requirements and private covenants.
Yeah. In Houston, we have what is effectively zoning. It's just that we do it at the neighborhood level. You want to go into the museum district or third ward and develop x, or y, or z? No problem. So long as the neighbors agree with you. Hint: Once they gentrify to the point of being called "The Museum District", they will definitely not be agreeing with you. I saw someone above throw out a figure of 3 or 4 hundred…
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I live in Palo Alto and saw a local ad for an acre of land with no house in Atherton going for $5.2M. The housing here is really screwed.
that's about 90 apartment units, or ~ $60k/unit in land cost...
There is a developer in Cupertino who has been fighting with the city for years, who got awfully quiet lately. Now I know why. I suspect they have a plan for an absolutely massive high rise behind my house that they will be submitting at 8am tomorrow morning. My neighbors are going to be pissed .
Yes, people here celebrating this don't understand at all that all this does is give developers more power over communities they have no interest in but money. And of course, the politicians that they will fund/bribe to make this happen. We just went from democracy to oligarchy in this case.
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages” ― Adam Smith
Looking at other countries like Japan with like barely any zoning laws, this looks great, I hope it leads to more mixed cities again and more walkable/liveable areas like before WW2. It is funny that America land of the free had so many restrictions, building up hundreds of zoning laws across the country did a lot of bad and led to a lot of urban sprawl leading to very poor cities and towns that literally cannot pay…
Tokyo is not a free-for-all. It does zone for different uses by forbidding certain uses above a certain nuisance or hazard level. For instance, in many areas you can’t just plop down a chemical factory. The cool thing about Tokyo zoning though is that anything below a nuisance level is pretty much allowed. Want to build a house next to a dump or above a discotheque? Go for it, no one is going to stop you.
Rent has gotten so outrageous that this is a good thing now.
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> Cities should be able to plan their own growth. They are able to plan their own growth, but they aren't able to refuse to grow. Or at least, not through zoning; being located where potable water or sewer/septic are at capacity is probably still valid to restrict new building.
Why not? if a low density community wants to plan to remain low density, who are the rest of us to stop them?
Looking at this abstractly, buying a plot of land grants you ownership over that plot, nothing more. So on what basis should an owner of one plot be able to dictate what others can do with their own plot?
Scaling up to a community, what % of plot owners need to share an opinion for that opinion to outweigh the property rights of disagreeing plot owners?
To my knowledge, the relevant collective management levels recognized under law are municipal, state, and federal.
Where does "community" mean anything beyond being a manufactured scope of convenience for NIMBYs? They can't get the entire city to agree with them, so they draw an artificial boundary where the majority agree with them and call it a neighbourhood.
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Where does this narrative about evil greedy developers come from? If the new housing represents a net increase in people, then the developers are filling unmet demand. It’s not that different from restricting the supply of milk and getting angry that milk producers will make more money when those restrictions are lifted. Yeah, they will, but only because there is more demand for their product than they were previousl…
People are looking for any scapegoat for the problems in their community so they don't have to look in the mirror. This is the same reason why there's a persistent myth that homeless are bused in from other states or whatever (when in reality, 70-90% of them were in homes in San Francisco before going on the street). It absolves people of blame
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> Cities should be able to plan their own growth. They are able to plan their own growth, but they aren't able to refuse to grow. Or at least, not through zoning; being located where potable water or sewer/septic are at capacity is probably still valid to restrict new building.
Why not? if a low density community wants to plan to remain low density, who are the rest of us to stop them?
And it's a sort of collective coordination problem, too. People can move from city to city, and if a city decides to allow lots of new housing, they'll get lots of new people, which not only increases density, but also lowers rents in other cities by a little bit, while not lowering the rents/property prices in their own city by as much as they would if inter-city migration weren't a thing.
So when a city allows more housing, it benefits other cities. It's best if every city does this -- but because the incentives are a bit messed up, most cities in California have decided to "defect" and block construction. (There are other reasons -- people with the most free time to attend city council meetings and run for positions in local government are much more likely to be landowners or landlords, so they are over-represented, while renters are under-represented).
If every city and town builds a some more housing, you can get a much more drastic increase in affordability than if only some are shouldering all the burden, without massive changes to any one place. Which is why I think it makes sense to handle this at the state level.
Looking at other countries like Japan with like barely any zoning laws, this looks great, I hope it leads to more mixed cities again and more walkable/liveable areas like before WW2. It is funny that America land of the free had so many restrictions, building up hundreds of zoning laws across the country did a lot of bad and led to a lot of urban sprawl leading to very poor cities and towns that literally cannot pay…
This has little to do with the existence of zoning laws themselves, but the specific zones that they define. Japan has zones, so does Spain. But there's just nothing anywhere near as Restrictive as most US cities' R1 zone. Many places have R2s and R3s that are still more restrictive than the least dense thing than a Spanish city has. Remove zones alone, and HOAs will get areas into legally binding covenants that are…
If I'm in a city and and I own one of these houses, it's clear economically that wanting to limit building multi-unit housing near me enhances the value growth of my property - because you can't build nearly as many SFH as you can apartments. I'm sure racism and fear of the other is still an issue (I'm from the south, I know it's an issue based on personal experience) but it's far more economic imho today. The end result is the same, people want to hold on to what they see as part of their "intrinsic value" in their neighborhood setup.
How would the builder's remedy work in a place like Atherton if the homeowners form a pact and refuse to sell to any developers? E.g. if Marc Andreessen ( https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/marc-andre... ) and Steph Curry ( https://therealdeal.com/2023/01/29/steph-curry-shoots-his-ni... ) form a coalition with other residents then they can effectively keep the city down zoned even if builder's remedy i…