[DRAFT] Restrictions on Housing Development

[Garbelia]

Restrictions on Housing Development
Category: Environmental
Industry Affected: All Businesses - Mild


The World Assembly,

Concerned that excessive urban expansion may lead to significant impact on natural areas;

Acknowledging that as nations expand, they may need more housing to home their citizens;

Worried that the loss of suitable habitats may lead to a decline in biodiversity;

Aware that urbanisation could damage smaller rural communities;

Hereby:

1. Defines:
   
   
   1. "Housing" as artificial structures with temporary or permanent residents;
   2. "Urban expansion" as the construction of houses in areas not previously inhabited;
   3. "Insulation" as materials to reduce rates of heat transfer;
2. Requires that member nations only allow urban expansion when permission obtained from nearby citizens and the relevant council;
   
3. Requires that all new houses are fitted with basic insulation, that is optimised for:
   
   
   1. Reducing carbon dioxide emissions;
   2. Low flammability;
   3. Effectiveness in increasing and decreasing internal temperatures, to be adjusted according to national averages, while halting the escape of heat;
4. Mandates that a maximum of 150,000 new units of housing are built per year.

The World Assembly,

Concerned that excessive urban expansion may lead to significant impact on natural areas;

Acknowledging that as nations expand, they may need more housing to home their citizens;

Worried that the loss of suitable habitats may lead to a decline in biodiversity;

Aware that urbanisation could damage smaller rural communities;

Hereby:

1. Defines:
   
   
   1. "Housing" as artificial structures with temporary or permanent residents;
   2. "Urban expansion" as the construction of houses in areas not previously inhabited;
   3. "Insulation" as materials to reduce rates of heat transfer;
2. Requires that member nations only allow urban expansion when permission obtained from nearby citizens and the relevant council;
   
3. Requires that all new houses are fitted with basic insulation, that is optimised for:
   
   
   1. Reducing carbon dioxide emissions;
   2. Low flammability;
   3. Effectiveness in increasing internal temperatures, while halting the escape of heat;
4. Mandates that a maximum of 150,000 new units of housing are built per year.

[Honeydewistania]

You define 'urban areas' but don't use the term. What's the reasoning for including it?

[Garbelia]

You define 'urban areas' but don't use the term. What's the reasoning for including it?

Originally, I was planning to use it in the definition of urban expansion, but now I see that it was unneeded, as it would only be used once.

[Ardiveds]

OOC: So I have two questions? Why does a house in a tropical region need insulation. Where I live the summers can touch 40-45 C and I definitely don't want to increase my home's internal temperature. Even the winters are like 14 C at the coldest.

Second, 150,000 seems rather arbitrary. What if there are more than 150k people who want to get houses? What about really large countries with population in the billions or trillions spanning over multiple planets?

[Garbelia]

OOC: So I have two questions? Why does a house in a tropical region need insulation. Where I live the summers can touch 40-45 C and I definitely don't want to increase my home's internal temperature. Even the winters are like 14 C at the coldest.

Second, 150,000 seems rather arbitrary. What if there are more than 150k people who want to get houses? What about really large countries with population in the billions or trillions spanning over multiple planets?

Firstly, the concern with insulation is mainly with heat getting out in the winter months, even in tropical areas. Either way, yes, an amendment to have the final requirement adjustable compared to average temperatures would be useful.

For your second question, there are always houses being vacated as well, so if current urban areas are well-maintained, then there is no need for 150k new houses, even if more than 150k need them, so around 150k, maybe to be amended to up to 300k would be a sensible limit.

[Imperium Anglorum]

Insulation also keeps houses cool by preventing the heat from getting in during the summer... I don't know why everyone is ignoring this.

[Ardiveds]

Firstly, the concern with insulation is mainly with heat getting out in the winter months, even in tropical areas. Either way, yes, an amendment to have the final requirement adjustable compared to average temperatures would be useful.

For your second question, there are always houses being vacated as well, so if current urban areas are well-maintained, then there is no need for 150k new houses, even if more than 150k need them, so around 150k, maybe to be amended to up to 300k would be a sensible limit.

OOC: 3c really needs better wording. I think regional average temperatures would a better choice than national averages.

Is the 150k limit on houses applicable city by city or to the nation as a whole?

[Gruenberg]

lmao NIMBYism in the WA. I've officially seen it all.

[Garbelia]

Insulation also keeps houses cool by preventing the heat from getting in during the summer... I don't know why everyone is ignoring this.

Thank you for pointing that out; I was so caught up in writing about increasing heat, and distracted by the snow outside that I forgot that "Reducing rates of heat transfer" includes reducing heat. (OOC)

Firstly, the concern with insulation is mainly with heat getting out in the winter months, even in tropical areas. Either way, yes, an amendment to have the final requirement adjustable compared to average temperatures would be useful.

For your second question, there are always houses being vacated as well, so if current urban areas are well-maintained, then there is no need for 150k new houses, even if more than 150k need them, so around 150k, maybe to be amended to up to 300k would be a sensible limit.

OOC: 3c really needs better wording. I think regional average temperatures would a better choice than national averages.

Is the 150k limit on houses applicable city by city or to the nation as a whole?

The 150k limit is county/province by county/province, but it is now clear that an amendment is needed to make that clearer and apply a percentage instead.

OOC: Yes, 3c will be almost completely rewritten now.

lmao NIMBYism in the WA. I've officially seen it all.

This is not specifically about reducing construction near homes, but more preventing a ecumenopolis from occuring, by installing a basic limit on encroachment upon green space.

[Imperium Anglorum]

2. Requires that member nations only allow urban expansion when permission obtained from nearby citizens and the relevant council;

Absolutely not. The paean to local control given in stories like Jane Jacobs' Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) is woefully misguided. While local control helps to prevent the kind of highway projects which people like Jacobs felt was destroying the traditional city-scape, in more recent years, it also has supported unthinking NIMBY-ism by local homeowners to prevent influx – especially of 'undesirable' minority groups – and building projects more generally because the home price increases associated with restrained supply accrue directly to those local homeowners. This is a recipe for exorbitant rents and unresponsive housing policy.

It does not help that

Courts, whose judges share the same environmental attitudes as middle class homeowners (just as 1920s judges shared the ideology of hearth and home), were more sympathetic to claims that the local decision had failed to account for environmental impacts than they had been to seemingly selfish claims that neighbors’ home values were at risk. William A Fischel, 'An economic history of zoning and a cure for its exclusionary effects' (2004) 41 Urban Studies 317, 332–3.

And that

There can be little doubt that court decisions have become friendlier to anti-development sentiment. Edward L Glaeser et al, 'Why have housing prices gone up?' (2005) 95 Am Econ Rev 329, 331.

Zoning policies writ large are the primary cause of the detachment of rents from the marginal cost of new physical construction. Edward L Glaesar and Joseph Gyourko, 'The impact of zoning on housing affordability' (2002) Nat'l Bureau of Econ Rsch working paper 8835, 21 (finding that 'measures of zoning strictness are highly correlated with high prices' and that their evidence suggests 'that this form of government regulation is responsible for high housing costs where they exist'). Local homeowners have basically no incentive to liberalise zoning policy to their own detriment. Only by being able to overrule local homeowners can housing shortages be alleviated.

4. Mandates that a maximum of 150,000 new units of housing are built per year.[/list]

Again, rubbish policy restraining new construction, enriching urban landowners at the expense of renters, while also lowering the quality of housing stock by preventing redevelopment.

1(a) "Housing" as artificial structures with temporary or permanent residents;

Office buildings are apparently housing.

[Boston Castle]

I really am not saying anything other than "I will not support any NIMBY-ism in the General Assembly. New housing construction go brrrr."

[Garbelia]

Thank you for pointing all of this out, it appears that what I thought to be a resolution to attempt to improve the environment had unintended side-effects and meanings. Sorry for wasting your time.

[Separatist Peoples]

"Full support. Not In My Back Yard!"

OOC: IA has summed up my position.

[CoraSpia]

"At the moment, Coraspar planning policy effectively gives the government very little authority concerning what people decide to build on their property. We don't want that authority, and we certainly don't want the job of enforcing random and arbitrary WA-mandated limits. Additionally, over 10 billion people call Coraspia home. If we were to build a maximum of 150000 houses per year, our current homelessness problem would become even worse."

[Boston Castle]

Thank you for pointing all of this out, it appears that what I thought to be a resolution to attempt to improve the environment had unintended side-effects and meanings. Sorry for wasting your time.

It's not wasting our time, and so long as it's something that's not you know really offensive (targeting the rights of people), we're willing to hear it. I would encourage you, think about your ideas again, do more research, stay involved! We always want to see new authors succeed, but occasionally, our first efforts don't and that's no big deal!