Abolish zoning

[Loeje]

Fuck zoning:

1. Zoning makes cities ugly and aesthetically hideous
2. Zoning makes cities soulless, cultureless, unpleasant, and unliveable
3. Zoning makes cities boring and without identity
4. Zoning makes society atomized, undermining the fabrics that holds the society together
5. Zoning promotes a ponzi scheme real estate system created by boomers that offloads the burden of city maintenance to the already squished future generation
6. Zoning is a satanic right wing capitalist instrument that oppresses the working class with the goal of enriching the landowning aristocratic selfish self-interested boomer class (modern day kulaks)
7. Zoning is a satanic left wing crony Big Government instrument that deprives people of their right to manage their own property as they see fit, instead taking that right away and transferring it to a shadowy group of elite bureaucrats and political machines that are both stupid and corrupt
8. Zoning can only implemented and maintained by a minority rule authoritarian political system that deprive people of their rights. These authoritarian systems promotes wholesale corruption and stunt societal growth
9. Zoning stunts economic growth and prosperity
10. Zoning is racist
11. Zoning decreases housing supply, which increases homelessness
12. Zoning increases homelessness, which promotes mass drug addiction, poverty, and crime
13. Zoning promotes rampant inequality, which promotes rampant social instability, populism, crime, and chaos
14. Zoning makes people less likely to walk, which increases obesity, which increases healthcare costs
15. Zoning radically increases housing costs, which increases living costs
16. Zoning increases living costs, which causes childlessness
17. Zoning causes childlessness, which causes demographic collapse
18. Zoning causes demographic collapse, which threatens the collapse of modern civilization as we know it
19. Zoning causes a plague of car usage, which increase living costs, mass deaths to road accidents, and causes mass air polution from vehicles
20. Zoning causes mass air pollutions, which indiscriminately kills millions of innocent people through lung cancer.
21. Zoning kills millions of people (cumulatively throughout the years through lung cancer through air pollution). Hitler kills millions of people. Zoning is literally Hitler.
22. Zoning causes mass air pollutions, which significantly contributes to global warming
23. Zoning significantly contributes to global warming, which threatens to destroy the world.

Every society has tumours that slowly grow and grow into a big cancer that, left untreated, eventually kills the entire organism in a Crisis. In the Roman Republic, it's how the military was structured. In today's time, one of it is housing.

Housing should be a commodity to be bought by everyone. Not investment that locks capital idle on the ground, instead of being productively used and invested in the real economy.

A good housing policy is one that actively plans, targets, and causes the value of housing and real estate to decrease as time goes on.

(So yes, this thread is not just restricted to zoning, but also extended to housing in general)

What the fuck is zoning

The Wikipedia page

[Cannot think of a name]

What is Zoning

Zoning is the practice of designating real estate to certain purposes. The primary divider is residential vs commercial, but then those are further divided up into the types of residential (single family, multifamily, live/work, etc) and commercial (factories, store fronts etc.)

Primarily it's why you don't drive down the street and have it go house store apartment factory machine shop school.

When people tell you that local elections matter more to your daily lives than national ones, this is one of those things because zoning is decided at the city and county levels by councils. If you're a fan of 80s movies about youth fads, that meeting they interrupt to save the community center by dancing, that's a zoning hearing. The Evil Developer is trying to change the zoning permit for that area from 'community center' to 'mall' or whatever.

It can become subject to abuse not just by breakdance hating developers, but in places like East St Louis where a company that owns a large amount of land will incorporate, becoming its own town and then creating its own zoning laws separate of the input of the poor (usually black) families that might live across the street.

It's also where the NIMBY (not in my backyard) wars are fought. Like in the NIMBY capitol of the world, Marin County just north of San Francisco. Prior to selling Star Wars to Disney, Lucas was going to build a full on studio in Marin a la Universal or WB. But the NIMBYs said no, so he used the already in place zoning and made the whole area low income housing and sold Star Wars. I probably got some details wrong there but the gist is the same. NIMBY folks use zoning to prevent things from happening in 'their backyard' even if they in theory support the need for it.

Zoning itself makes a degree of sense, it puts people together in one place and the places that people go in one place, but it's decided usually by a group of business owners who had the time and money to run in a local election attended by very few people who don't really spend any time getting to know who they are. Either these business owners are looking for zoning and community laws that benefit them or they're loaded members of the NIMBY crowd so not all zoning decisions are made under the auspices of thoughtful city planning.

In the past there has been 'defacto' zoning by banks called 'red lining' which would prevent minorities (primarily black) from getting loans approved in 'white' neighborhoods. Alluded to earlier, real estate developers can manipulate scarcity via zoning to increase the value of their holdings which has the additional effect of pricing out poorer families which, because of collected history of racist policy making skew disproportionately towards minority groups.

It also can be used as a tool in gentrification. As more afluent usually white families move into a traditionally poor and minority dominate neighborhood that they've managed to give a bit of character that the gentrifiers want a part of they get themselves on these committees and change the zoning laws that start to whittle away at the original resident's ability to stay in their own neighborhoods.

OH! If you've ever seen one of those clips or collection of clips where local loons yell at a group of people usually sitting in in an arc of some kind, usually they're getting upset at a zoning decision. Or a school board. Those meetings attract theatrical people with a strong opinion and time on their hands.

[Forsher]

What is Zoning

Originally it was basically "don't build factories here" and then it was "don't build anything here" (greenbelts) and today it's "you can only build single family detached housing here, here, here, well, honestly, basically it's the only thing that can be built pretty much everywhere". Some cities achieve the latter outcome without actually having specific zonings but through regulating how buildings are built (i.e. features buildings can and can't have, e.g. how far back they must be set from the property line/road). A classic example of this is Houston.

That is, zoning is the regulation not just of what can and can't be built where, but also how it is built. However, technically it's just the first two bits... I just think, as Houston demonstrates, the separation of the three things is wholly artificial.

prohibition of building denser apartment blocks keeps property prices high

Sort of.

Single family zoning keeps unit prices high and land values low.

When a property is upzoned it becomes much more expensive to buy because a developer can put two (or more!) units on the same land. It's cheaper to buy an $850,000 house than a $1.2 million house, but it's not much more expensive to build and sell two of the former than it is to build one of the latter and doing it this way nets you $1.7 million, which is half a million more than just selling the single $1.2 million McMansion.

Of course, single family detached housing/R1 zoning has the effect of creating an artificial scarcity, so property prices do rise (in general), it's just that they're not as high as they would be given upzoning. It's possible that a city without zoning wouldn't have miles and miles of low density sprawl at all and, if it did, the land values would have to necessarily be very low in order to make a single unit be a profit maximising housing form. Nevertheless it remains that upzoning land increases its value (though, yes, the buyers tend to quickly become developers rather than new residents).

People misunderstand this all the time. They think of NIMBYs as these profit maximising entities whereas, in reality, NIMBYs fight very hard against changes that, financially, they should support. This, of course, goes back to what you're actually talking about, because NIMBYs fight against upzoning so as to keep their neighbourhoods static in all respects.

[Major-Tom]

Houston is what happens when we disregard zoning. We don't want our cities to look like Houston.

Zoning is a tool, and like all tools, it can be used for the betterment of our society or to its detriment. But it's sure as hell a necessary tool in a city's kit.

[USS Monitor]

Anyway, bad zoning is indeed a big problem. Single-family zones in the suburbs are killing the environment by encouraging suburban sprawl and car-centric transportation. It's high time these were abolished and apartment blocks allowed to be built in single-family zones. Denser cities are unironically greener by being more energy efficient and having less human encroachment.

Even just more flexible single-family housing would be an improvement. I own a single-family home, but there are still single-family residential areas where my house would violate the zoning laws because it is too small, the lot is too narrow, and the house is too close to the street. Mind you, I have plenty of space. There is even room for Lake Ontario to raise her children in my backyard. It's so nice to have a little baby lake in my yard every spring!

People who want to get in on the whole tiny house trend run into zoning issues pretty often.

Some places would benefit from more apartment blocks, but that's just the tip the iceberg of what people can't build because of bad zoning.

[Drongonia]

Anyway, bad zoning is indeed a big problem. Single-family zones in the suburbs are killing the environment by encouraging suburban sprawl and car-centric transportation. It's high time these were abolished and apartment blocks allowed to be built in single-family zones. Denser cities are unironically greener by being more energy efficient and having less human encroachment.

There are environmental concerns both ways.

Overdevelopment can massively increase air, light and noise pollution in any given area. Not to mention the loss of greenfields and biodiversity by replacing six back and front yards with concrete piles for a large building(s).

There are also climate-related issues that go along with this. For example, in flood-prone areas, removing greenfields has the effect of massively reducing the natural drainage provided by grass/soil, meaning that floodwater effectively has nowhere to go. Property developers' collective solution for this seems to be to redirect it all to already at-capacity stormwater systems.

You can have suburbs without car-centric transportation. Nothing is stopping you as a city from building good public transport connections out to your suburbs via bus or light rail, or allowing small shopping/schooling areas within lighter-density property zones to discourage long travel. The latter is distinctly an American issue.

[Loeje]

Anyway, bad zoning is indeed a big problem. Single-family zones in the suburbs are killing the environment by encouraging suburban sprawl and car-centric transportation. It's high time these were abolished and apartment blocks allowed to be built in single-family zones. Denser cities are unironically greener by being more energy efficient and having less human encroachment.

There are environmental concerns both ways.

Overdevelopment can massively increase air, light and noise pollution in any given area. Not to mention the loss of greenfields and biodiversity by replacing six back and front yards with concrete piles for a large building(s).

There are also climate-related issues that go along with this. For example, in flood-prone areas, removing greenfields has the effect of massively reducing the natural drainage provided by grass/soil, meaning that floodwater effectively has nowhere to go. Property developers' collective solution for this seems to be to redirect it all to already at-capacity stormwater systems.

You can have suburbs without car-centric transportation. Nothing is stopping you as a city from building good public transport connections out to your suburbs via bus or light rail, or allowing small shopping/schooling areas within lighter-density property zones to discourage long travel. The latter is distinctly an American issue.

The American yard is actually pretty bad for biodiversity and the environment.

[Neutraligon]

Anyway, bad zoning is indeed a big problem. Single-family zones in the suburbs are killing the environment by encouraging suburban sprawl and car-centric transportation. It's high time these were abolished and apartment blocks allowed to be built in single-family zones. Denser cities are unironically greener by being more energy efficient and having less human encroachment.

Even just more flexible single-family housing would be an improvement. I own a single-family home, but there are still single-family residential areas where my house would violate the zoning laws because it is too small, the lot is too narrow, and the house is too close to the street. Mind you, I have plenty of space. There is even room for Lake Ontario to raise her children in my backyard. It's so nice to have a little baby lake in my yard every spring!

People who want to get in on the whole tiny house trend run into zoning issues pretty often.

Some places would benefit from more apartment blocks, but that's just the tip the iceberg of what people can't build because of bad zoning.

I would like to see more duplexes and quadplexes as well as allowances for small neighborhood shops. The area I grew up in had this very small "strip mall" series of shops. I think there where like 4-5 of them with some office space above. There was a small grocery store, a small drug store a barber and the final two shops shifted and changed. There was also one very nice french restaurant on its own right next to the strip. Very popular place for the kids in the neighborhood. The building is prezoning and so any shops there are grandfathered in. No new ones can be made. Still it is smack dab in the middle of a residential area, and works great for if you want a quick run for milk or eggs or something small. The owner of the grocery is a nice korean dude who knows each of the regulars by name.

[Drongonia]

There are environmental concerns both ways.

Overdevelopment can massively increase air, light and noise pollution in any given area. Not to mention the loss of greenfields and biodiversity by replacing six back and front yards with concrete piles for a large building(s).

There are also climate-related issues that go along with this. For example, in flood-prone areas, removing greenfields has the effect of massively reducing the natural drainage provided by grass/soil, meaning that floodwater effectively has nowhere to go. Property developers' collective solution for this seems to be to redirect it all to already at-capacity stormwater systems.

You can have suburbs without car-centric transportation. Nothing is stopping you as a city from building good public transport connections out to your suburbs via bus or light rail, or allowing small shopping/schooling areas within lighter-density property zones to discourage long travel. The latter is distinctly an American issue.

The American yard is actually pretty bad for biodiversity and the environment.

Not talking about America specifically. Yes, having artificially seeded grass with nothing else is quite bad. However, actual lawns that you just mow and have flowers in, with trees on the sections etc are very good for the environment and sticking concrete/metal/glass bricks in the ground is always a net negative in that respect.

The area I grew up in had this very small "strip mall" series of shops. I think there where like 4-5 of them with some office space above. There was a small grocery store, a small drug store a barber and the final two shops shifted and changed. There was also one very nice french restaurant on its own right next to the strip. Very popular place for the kids in the neighborhood. The building is prezoning and so any shops there are grandfathered in. No new ones can be made. Still it is smack dab in the middle of a residential area, and works great for if you want a quick run for milk or eggs or something small. The owner of the grocery is a nice korean dude who knows each of the regulars by name.

This sort of thing is the norm in New Zealand. It's a shame that's not more common overseas.

[Ammar and Casentino]

How come do cities have tourism if their ugly due to zoning?

[Cannot think of a name]

Anyway, bad zoning is indeed a big problem. Single-family zones in the suburbs are killing the environment by encouraging suburban sprawl and car-centric transportation. It's high time these were abolished and apartment blocks allowed to be built in single-family zones. Denser cities are unironically greener by being more energy efficient and having less human encroachment.

Even just more flexible single-family housing would be an improvement. I own a single-family home, but there are still single-family residential areas where my house would violate the zoning laws because it is too small, the lot is too narrow, and the house is too close to the street. Mind you, I have plenty of space. There is even room for Lake Ontario to raise her children in my backyard. It's so nice to have a little baby lake in my yard every spring!

People who want to get in on the whole tiny house trend run into zoning issues pretty often.

Some places would benefit from more apartment blocks, but that's just the tip the iceberg of what people can't build because of bad zoning.

LA is getting a really into "ADUs" or people turning their garages or backyards into an additional dwelling unit because you can charge someone $2k/month to live in your garage or backyard. But then a 684sqft 2 bedroom is listed at fucking $765,000...so...we have that going on.

[Neutraligon]

The American yard is actually pretty bad for biodiversity and the environment.

Not talking about America specifically. Yes, having artificially seeded grass with nothing else is quite bad. However, actual lawns that you just mow and have flowers in, with trees on the sections etc are very good for the environment and sticking concrete/metal/glass bricks in the ground is always a net negative in that respect.

The area I grew up in had this very small "strip mall" series of shops. I think there where like 4-5 of them with some office space above. There was a small grocery store, a small drug store a barber and the final two shops shifted and changed. There was also one very nice french restaurant on its own right next to the strip. Very popular place for the kids in the neighborhood. The building is prezoning and so any shops there are grandfathered in. No new ones can be made. Still it is smack dab in the middle of a residential area, and works great for if you want a quick run for milk or eggs or something small. The owner of the grocery is a nice korean dude who knows each of the regulars by name.

This sort of thing is the norm in New Zealand. It's a shame that's not more common overseas.

In the US single family zoning has meant that it is basically non-existant. There are huge swathes of single family zoning specifically made so that it takes forever to get from point A to B (so that trucks do not use it as a pass through) with no commercial anything. Means that people need cars since getting out of the neighborhood is such a hassle.

[Loeje]

The American yard is actually pretty bad for biodiversity and the environment.

Not talking about America specifically. Yes, having artificially seeded grass with nothing else is quite bad. However, actual lawns that you just mow and have flowers in, with trees on the sections etc are very good for the environment and sticking concrete/metal/glass bricks in the ground is always a net negative in that respect.

Space for native plants is always good. However, suburban sprawl tends to not leave as much space for native plants because it doesn't leave space for anything really.

[Neutraligon]

Not talking about America specifically. Yes, having artificially seeded grass with nothing else is quite bad. However, actual lawns that you just mow and have flowers in, with trees on the sections etc are very good for the environment and sticking concrete/metal/glass bricks in the ground is always a net negative in that respect.

Space for native plants is always good. However, suburban sprawl tends to not leave as much space for native plants because it doesn't leave space for anything really.

My mom has a garden that is 90% native and self pollinating. She gives away her excess plants at this point because her garden is so prolific. You can do native gardens in suburbs, it is just most people don't.

[Drongonia]

Not talking about America specifically. Yes, having artificially seeded grass with nothing else is quite bad. However, actual lawns that you just mow and have flowers in, with trees on the sections etc are very good for the environment and sticking concrete/metal/glass bricks in the ground is always a net negative in that respect.


This sort of thing is the norm in New Zealand. It's a shame that's not more common overseas.

In the US single family zoning has meant that it is basically non-existant. There are huge swathes of single family zoning specifically made so that it takes forever to get from point A to B (so that trucks do not use it as a pass through) with no commercial anything. Means that people need cars since getting out of the neighborhood is such a hassle.

So something like this is not really a thing?

(Excuse the long link, Google Maps co-ords.)

[The Grand Fifth Imperium]

Zoning is great! Personnally id rather not live next to a factory

[Farnhamia]

Space for native plants is always good. However, suburban sprawl tends to not leave as much space for native plants because it doesn't leave space for anything really.

My mom has a garden that is 90% native and self pollinating. She gives away her excess plants at this point because her garden is so prolific. You can do native gardens in suburbs, it is just most people don't.

What's her address, I reporting her to the HOA!

[Neutraligon]

In the US single family zoning has meant that it is basically non-existant. There are huge swathes of single family zoning specifically made so that it takes forever to get from point A to B (so that trucks do not use it as a pass through) with no commercial anything. Means that people need cars since getting out of the neighborhood is such a hassle.

So something like this is not really a thing?

(Excuse the long link, Google Maps co-ords.)

In those areas, not really.

[Cannot think of a name]

Anyway, bad zoning is indeed a big problem. Single-family zones in the suburbs are killing the environment by encouraging suburban sprawl and car-centric transportation. It's high time these were abolished and apartment blocks allowed to be built in single-family zones. Denser cities are unironically greener by being more energy efficient and having less human encroachment.

There are environmental concerns both ways.

Overdevelopment can massively increase air, light and noise pollution in any given area. Not to mention the loss of greenfields and biodiversity by replacing six back and front yards with concrete piles for a large building(s).

There are also climate-related issues that go along with this. For example, in flood-prone areas, removing greenfields has the effect of massively reducing the natural drainage provided by grass/soil, meaning that floodwater effectively has nowhere to go. Property developers' collective solution for this seems to be to redirect it all to already at-capacity stormwater systems.

You can have suburbs without car-centric transportation. Nothing is stopping you as a city from building good public transport connections out to your suburbs via bus or light rail, or allowing small shopping/schooling areas within lighter-density property zones to discourage long travel. The latter is distinctly an American issue.

See: Sacramento. Initially they made the already flood prone area worse and hotter since all of the shit they built was absorbing and radiating the heat. They had to do a hard countersteer to correct which included a robust effort to replant a bunch of trees (at one point its nickname was 'city of trees'...if it's still considered a nickname if no one uses it...)

[Loeje]

Space for native plants is always good. However, suburban sprawl tends to not leave as much space for native plants because it doesn't leave space for anything really.

My mom has a garden that is 90% native and self pollinating. She gives away her excess plants at this point because her garden is so prolific. You can do native gardens in suburbs, it is just most people don't.

There's social pressure against it in a lot of cases. The problem isn't just with zoning.

[Neutraligon]

There are environmental concerns both ways.

Overdevelopment can massively increase air, light and noise pollution in any given area. Not to mention the loss of greenfields and biodiversity by replacing six back and front yards with concrete piles for a large building(s).

There are also climate-related issues that go along with this. For example, in flood-prone areas, removing greenfields has the effect of massively reducing the natural drainage provided by grass/soil, meaning that floodwater effectively has nowhere to go. Property developers' collective solution for this seems to be to redirect it all to already at-capacity stormwater systems.

You can have suburbs without car-centric transportation. Nothing is stopping you as a city from building good public transport connections out to your suburbs via bus or light rail, or allowing small shopping/schooling areas within lighter-density property zones to discourage long travel. The latter is distinctly an American issue.

See: Sacramento. Initially they made the already flood prone area worse and hotter since all of the shit they built was absorbing and radiating the heat. They had to do a hard countersteer to correct which included a robust effort to replant a bunch of trees (at one point its nickname was 'city of trees'...if it's still considered a nickname if no one uses it...)

There is also some interesting technology that can help with that. There are road surfaces that intentionally let melt water through to the ground below as an example. Of course there is also the rooftop garden.

[Drongonia]

My mom has a garden that is 90% native and self pollinating. She gives away her excess plants at this point because her garden is so prolific. You can do native gardens in suburbs, it is just most people don't.

There's social pressure against it in a lot of cases. The problem isn't just with zoning.

If anything HOAs should be abolished. I'd hate to live under one.

[Neutraligon]

My mom has a garden that is 90% native and self pollinating. She gives away her excess plants at this point because her garden is so prolific. You can do native gardens in suburbs, it is just most people don't.

There's social pressure against it in a lot of cases. The problem isn't just with zoning.

True. Originally she was trying for an English garden, now she is more into various grasses and other native plants.

[Neutraligon]

There's social pressure against it in a lot of cases. The problem isn't just with zoning.

If anything HOAs should be abolished. I'd hate to live under one.

I can under stand somewhat why people want HOAs, the issue is that they are all to often the breeding ground of petty tyrants.

Anyway, I support the existence of zoning so that things like IKEA or a factory do not end up in the middle of a small neighborhood. That said, I think that the way the US has gone about zoning has created serious issues, namely that it has created the need for cars.

[Drongonia]

If anything HOAs should be abolished. I'd hate to live under one.

I can under stand somewhat why people want HOAs, the issue is that they are all to often the breeding ground of petty tyrants.

Sure, it makes a lot of sense to enforce some sort of standards re your house's presentation - but going from "we don't want you to have broken cars and couches on the lawns" to "you have a certain type of garden" is, as you say, a form of petty tyrannical rule.

Anyway, I support the existence of zoning so that things like IKEA or a factory do not end up in the middle of a small neighborhood. That said, I think that the way the US has gone about zoning has created serious issues, namely that it has created the need for cars.

I agree. I support the idea of mixed-use low-density housing, as well as mixed-use medium-density, to allow for the building of small shops, clinics, hairdressers etc etc near single-family dwellings, as well as near any sort of apartment or multiplexes.