721–730 of 1001 posts
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It goes back to the late 1800's and Early 1900's and like many legal overreaches in the US, zoning laws were primarily spawned from a desire to discriminate on the basis of race or class. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoning_in_the_United_States#Or...
WP may not be entirely evenhanded on this subject.
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> 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…
> that are safe for kids It’s all about kids. Without kids in the picture sure, go ahead, make cities look like Coruscant from Star Wars. The instant you have kids you see how important open spaces safe enough for unstructured minimally supervised play are. Without spaces like this all you have are kids drooling on Roblox and YouTube all day. There’s nothing for kids in an urban core. Those spaces don’t have to be un…
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High rises are not dystopian. What is dystopian is people living in fucking tents
Any bets on whether eliminating zoning has any effect on the number of "people living in fucking tents?" In my experience, the people in tents aren't waiting with a down payment that's a few tens of thousands short of market. I think you're right that the solution here is being driven by homelessness. I also think it's more progressive wishful thinking.
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/7/13/housing-scarci...
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High rises are for people who aren't light sleepers, don't mind hearing music and noise in adjacent walls or above or below, are tolerant of parties and generally sociable. Guess who fits that demographic? Young single people and young couples who go out. The average middle age crank needs a house without shared walls and space. There are individual preferences at play here. No one chooses a high rise, it's just more…
There are plenty of high-density buildings that don't require 'light sleepers'. I live in one right now. The only sound I hear from other units is if we both have windows open; otherwise it's dead quiet to the point that I had to put in some rugs to muffle echoes from walking around on the tiled floors.
The uncertainty around neighbors and the obligation to be tolerant is why single family houses are preferable to some people. Barking dogs when owners are away are another joy of apartment living.
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Can anyone suggest an accurate, neutral title, preferably using representative language from the article, which fits within HN's 80 char limit? If so, I'll be happy to change it above. (We usually do this ourselves, but I find the details here a bit disorienting and don't have time to concentrate on it)
I think just changing "California" to "Bay Area" would be reasonable for now. If the article is correct, zoning is being completely eradicated, but I'm not sure why the poster decided to say it was for all of California.
This is a confusing situation! confusing to me at least.
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> Remove zones alone, and HOAs will get areas into legally binding covenants that are also just as tough as their current zoning regulation. This. Houston has little or no zoning and is terribly sprawling and car-centric. Despite the lack of zoning, in most neighborhoods you can't just build whatever you want because of restrictive covenants. Developers build massive car-focused single-family-only developments and lo…
Next up, get rid of HOAs.
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But why is that? Maybe because children don’t play on the street at all in the city. So what does the fraction look when we take children playing outside and be healthy instead of just children? The chance remains the same but for the ones that survive there is a better quality of life.
Higher speeds. Suburban streets/roads/stroads optimize for traffic safety, not pedestrian safety. The wide roads and large front yards promote higher driving speeds. For a long time the thinking was even that front yards can work as a place for cars to stop safely if they fly off the road. They talk about this in Strong Towns iirc
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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. 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…