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Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow

darrellowens.substack.com

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Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow

#631

Post by vineyardmike »

giantrobot wrote: post #595
nlavezzo wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The answers are very uncomfortable. Are they? Isn't it possible that people who live in beautiful neighborhoods with mature trees, nice big yards, and low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around, want to keep them that way for primarily those reasons? Of course their desires alone shouldn't be the final word on proposed changes to codes, but implying that all of these homeowners are primarily driven b…

> Are they? Isn't it possible that people who live in beautiful neighborhoods with mature trees, nice big yards, and low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around, want to keep them that way for primarily those reasons? For one if zoning laws change tomorrow no one is going to bulldoze those neighborhoods on Thursday. So everyone already in their "safe" neighborhood will remain "safe". Except in rare circ…

> For one if zoning laws change tomorrow no one is going to bulldoze those neighborhoods on Thursday.

I’m so in favor of up zoning, but some parts of California will be quickly thrust into a new reality.

Santa Monica was the first town to fail the housing element. They previously had 1600 houses built in the last 8 years. Since failing recently, developers have submitted permits for 4000 units. That’s 20x above the yearly average. If I was a “desirable” town, I’d be very nervous to not comply.

If I owned property in one of those towns I’d have been advertising it to developers hard too.

Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow

#632

Post by lfuller »

ipaddr wrote: post #579
hibikir wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The answers are very uncomfortable Like cleaner air, safer streets, less traffic and a better place to raise a child and/or dog with backyards and privacy.

Nearly all studies regarding suburban vs. urban streets have shown that suburban streets have significantly higher rates of child deaths and injuries than urban streets.

Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow

#633

Post by fnordpiglet »

jimnotgym wrote: post #516
fnordpiglet wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truth is people want to live in a community of the character they choose when they moved into that community. The high density housing community seems to think everyone just needs an efficiency unit in a Soviet style housing block and anyone else is an entitled NIMBY. What the person said was developers don’t care about the community they’re building into. Loosening of community rules means they can move in start bui…

As an aside... I find it fun that people in the US use the term 'Victorian' to describe an era. I like the idea of naming an era in a Republic after a foreign monarch. Incidentally, if it were 100 years old it would be Georgian . Vitoria died in 1901

No, the term describes an architectural style that was popular ~100 years ago. I might be off by some number of years. It is related to the era, but it is independent of it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_architecture

Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow

#634

Post by hcurtiss »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #596
nlavezzo wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The answers are very uncomfortable. Are they? Isn't it possible that people who live in beautiful neighborhoods with mature trees, nice big yards, and low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around, want to keep them that way for primarily those reasons? Of course their desires alone shouldn't be the final word on proposed changes to codes, but implying that all of these homeowners are primarily driven b…

> Are they? Isn't it possible that people who live in beautiful neighborhoods with mature trees, nice big yards, and low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around, want to keep them that way for primarily those reasons? You mean like all the medium-density neighborhoods of San Francisco? American R-1 suburbs are a nightmare for kids, and that's why you never see any kids outside there, tell me how this: h…

I live in a suburban R-1 neighborhood in Oregon and my kids play basketball, ride bikes, and roller skate in the street literally every day with boatloads of other kids. If that's your vision of a nightmare, I fear we're not going to agree on any of this.

Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow

#635

Post by bluGill »

grumple wrote: post #186
ethanbond wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, most zoning is created by property owners, too. Gotta preserve their investment at the expense of our nation's growth.

Zoning is also used to preserve the character of a neighborhood. Unfortunately, that typically includes racial character. The US has a long history of zoning as a proxy for redlining and racism [0]. 0. https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2021/06/17/...

Character is the worst part of any area. They are preserving old buildings that cannot be made energy efficient without a large investment, while making that investment illegal as well. All in name of preserving a building just because it is 'old'.

Sure there are a few buildings that are historic and should be preserved, but the vast majority are only old, and have no other historic value.

Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow

#636

Post by threeseed »

webkike wrote: post #435
nostromo123 wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, f*k other people, let's cram as many souls as we can in affordable dystopian high rises... that's the spirit!

High rises are not dystopian. What is dystopian is people living in fucking tents

The world isn't black and white.

You can have increased density with mandated affordable housing without needing high rise developments.

Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow

#637

Post by xp84 »

This is GREAT news. American zoning laws, that have led to vast swaths of single-family-home-only zones, are an absolute disaster. There are plenty of car-dependent SFH-only suburban neighborhoods in existence where fans of SFHs will always be able to find them, and they're not going anywhere. I live in a SFH myself. But in congested cities, *no more of that crap needs to be built!* It's as inappropriate of a land use in a place like SF or Oakland as a 20-acre cornfield.

A real city is better when you can walk to things near where you live, like offices, doctors, restaurants, etc. You get that so easily with housing on top, businesses below. And businesses interspersed with the housing. It just works.

Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow

#638

Post by arrosenberg »

ericmay wrote: post #484
arrosenberg wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is real harm done, and it is anti-democratic in some ways to take state or national laws and have those supercede (micromanage in this case) local building rules or regulations. You could just as easily argue it's pro-democratic because it lets the State break the power of the local, petty gentry to keep people from moving in.

I'm not concerned about "petty gentry" or whatever silly class warfare terms people use. It's not only boring but harms progress by pitting people against each other. You can of course argue that things are or are not democratic. That's part of my point. Overriding local, more direct democracy (in theory) could be anti-democratic in my view. But doing something like having highly restrictive zoning laws such that you…

> Overriding local, more direct democracy (in theory) could be anti-democratic in my view.

Your theory is bunk, that's my point. What pits people against each other are exclusionary housing laws that the wealthy use to keep poor people separate from them, not the words we use to describe that choice.

> But you can make cases for both. For every "We don't like the zoning because it keeps the place expensive" there's "we don't care what the residents want this toxic waste dump has to go somewhere.

No you can't, because the people who promote exclusionary housing laws always want to solve the issue by putting the toxic waste dump where the poor live. Never mind that the wealth in their community is directly correlated to generating the toxic waste in the first place. When a wealthy elite foist all of their externalities on the masses, that's oligarchy baby.

It's fine to hold that as your ideal, I'm not a purist, but don't claim that's democracy by any modern definition.

Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow

#639

Post by willnonya »

throw0101a wrote: post #577
nlavezzo wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The answers are very uncomfortable. Are they? Isn't it possible that people who live in beautiful neighborhoods with mature trees, nice big yards, and low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around, want to keep them that way for primarily those reasons? Of course their desires alone shouldn't be the final word on proposed changes to codes, but implying that all of these homeowners are primarily driven b…

> Isn't it possible that people who live in beautiful neighborhoods with mature trees, nice big yards, and low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around Basically how things were built pre-WW2? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0&t=68s The Oh the Urbanity channel has a video on the (misguided) idea that "urban living" = Manhattan / Hong Kong apart…

"Basically how things were built pre-WW2?"

Or, like many places still build them today?

Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow

#640

Post by ignormies »

programmarchy wrote: post #393
softsound wrote: post #364

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…

Another data point on lax zoning laws is Houston, which is awful and completely unwalkable. It’s not cool when someone builds a concrete plant next to your house either.

Houston has "zoning but we're not calling it zoning" zoning laws

https://youtu.be/TaU1UH_3B5k

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