26 ms·

Measuring the impact of zoning on housing in a city

44 points by mickgardner 2y ago

rybosworld 2y ago
Now do the major cities in Canada and U.S.
- zip1234 2y ago
  Would love to see San Francisco
voisin 2y ago
> Planners do important work moulding how our cities grow. Lost me at the first sentence. Let me fix it: “Planners follow the flavour of the day while committing the same sins over and over, their failures recognizable only in retrospect once replaced with a new (also faulty) paradigm based on centralized planning. Despite their repeated failures, as an industry or field of study they show no contrition and continue to act as if they and only they know what’s best.”
- philips 2y ago
  I have personally been involved in a few planning and “traffic engineering” issues where I live. And although this comment is heavy on the sarcasm it is very reflective of my experience. As a whole planning departments seem unable to defend decisions with relevant data and instead rely on indefensibly old manuals and standards. Some of which themselves use indefensible statistics- particularly traffic manuals (lets plan our roads based on a survey of a similar road in Atlanta in 1994!). Or worse municipalities follow each other in circles and trends. This would all be fine if the downstream effects weren’t affecting investment with a floor of tens of millions dollars. I don’t know what the answer is but Parking Reform, Strong Towns and Not Just Bikes are my north stars on this stuff. Do you have any others?
  - voisin 2y ago
    I am not actually intending to be sarcastic at all - I think the entire industry is morally bankrupt. I am a real estate developer (re-developer actually - specializing in heritage buildings and other complicated adaptive reuse projects), so I deal with planners, committees, official plans, zoning by-laws and the building code daily. It is painful to see indefensible requirements being thrust on projects - even those projects (like mine) that the municipality seems predisposed to desire (saving old buildings, intensifying the core, etc etc). What’s worse, is to watch governments now rush to “fix” the mistakes that they are solely responsible for by punishing people - retroactively changing the rules - and costing average folk their savings. I refer to Canada specifically which made it so challenging to build housing for 40 years that we have a massive scarcity and housing crisis that is being “fixed” by taxing / fining people for having a second home.
    - BenFranklin100 2y ago
      What is your opinion on the recent SCOTUS decisions declaring that forcing developers to pay for community improvements qualifies as a taking? Do you see this having a material effect on housing development?
      - alistairSH 2y ago
        Do you have a link to a summary? I missed it, if it ever made the front page news. IANAdeveloper… if a developer is otherwise within code/zoning, SCOTUS is probably correct. If they’re asking for zoning changes, there should be room for negotiation on nearby improvements.
        AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        The takings clause was ratified in 1791. Unless the current zoning restrictions predate that, there is an element of cheating to imposing a restriction and then "negotiating" to remove it in exchange for something that would otherwise be a taking.
        2y ago
- Angostura 2y ago
  What's your preferred solution? Laissez-faire development?
  - davidw 2y ago
    I think some of the discussion in this book - written by a former planner - is pretty sensible around what we should be doing: https://islandpress.org/books/arbitrary-lines#desc https://islandpress.org/books/arbitrary-lines#desc By getting planners out of some of the unnecessary minutiae of their jobs, they can, well, actually plan for things. Ensure that we have good street grids, land set aside for parks and schools that are harder to retrofit into a pure 'anything goes' system, and also try to do some planning to keep genuinely noxious uses away from where people live, rather than "keeping apartments away from the 'nice' neighborhoods".
  - renewiltord 2y ago
    Whatever Tokyo is doing is nice. I liked it. Mixed use is fantastic.
  - voisin 2y ago
    Yes. I think the canonical fear that there would be nuclear power plants next to daycares is nonsense and that private developers acting in their own interests would manage to identify market demand, experiment in fulfilling that demand, and the result would be the creation from the ground up of best practices for creating vibrant communities - until market preferences shift. And when those preferences shift I think private developers would be far quicker to adapt than central planners. I find it wild how much the west abhors eastern communist central planning and then adopts it for the very fabric of its communities.
- alistairSH 2y ago
  In my experience, local planners usually try to do what’s right/best/useful. And then end up hamstrung by state law or state DOT. I’m in Fairfax County, VA FWIW. I’ve seen them be quite proactive with plans near the Metro extension. But then VDOT does dumb shit like failing to build out multi-modal transit to meet the vision of the local planners.
- k99x55 2y ago
  The Lively & Liveable Neighbourhoods that are Illegal in Most of North America : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnKIVX968PQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnKIVX968PQ The Suburbs Are Bleeding America Dry | Climate Town (feat. Not Just Bikes) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfsCniN7Nsc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfsCniN7Nsc
Dig1t 2y ago
I personally tried to build more housing, I tried to buy 5 acres and build 5 homes on them. 5 acres could have easily held 5 large homes with big yards. The city zoning board denied me, saying that that 5-acre plot had been zoned for ONE house and an ADU of no larger than 300 sqft. That was when I realized why housing is so expensive.
- WaxProlix 2y ago
  I've looked at something similar. The path is to split the plot first via your county (or whatever) and then build.
  - Dig1t 2y ago
    Correct, but the zoning board people outright told me they would deny the request to split the lot because it had already been zoned as “single family”.
    - WaxProlix 2y ago
      Strange, and frustrating sounding - 1a each is plenty to leave the resulting plots as conformant single family housing.
      - toast0 2y ago
        Where I'm at, our least dense zone is 1 unit per 2.5 acres. If the lot was almost, but not quite 5 acres, it couldn't be split without a variance. In theory, the state requires the city to allow for 2x population growth, and the zoning process directs where the growth should happen. In practice, the city pushes back so hard on everything, that the growth is going to happen wherever whoever has patience and money to spend on fighting the council wants to build. Everyone else is going to be frustrated by the long process of back and forth on pulling permits over many years and many dollars that actually the city won't let you do whatever you wanted to do anyway.
- boplicity 2y ago
swozey 2y ago
> Giving up some aesthetic control means creating a city much more like Tokyo where building heights differ markedly even on lots next door to each other. I've lived a ridiculous number of major USA cities and I'll never forget what Houston, which is the only one I can think of that had no zoning, looked like. https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Weirdest-images-from-Houston-s-lack-of-zoning-laws-9171688.php https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Wei...
- com2kid 2y ago
  Here is a good article on Tokyo zoning: https://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html https://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.htm... You'll notice that the model is additive instead of exclusionary. Basically if a block is zoned light commercial, you can put stores, apartments, or single family homes on it. Here is a nice chart https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Lweabho82d0/U0HCJsQ3tbI/AAAAAAAAAys/Hy-TACJv1p4/s1600/Principle+JPzoning.jpg https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Lweabho82d0/U0HCJsQ3tbI/AAAAAAAAA... Tokyo does zoning right, and the simplest first step to solve housing problems that plague major American cities is to just adopt a model of zoning that is proven to work.
  - swozey 2y ago
    > 1- Zoning is a *national law*, not a municipal by-law A national zoning law is very interesting. My biggest complaint about every city in TX I lived in (Houston, Austin, SATX, Dallas) was the lack of MDUs (among other things) causing them all to be painfully sparse. I lived in the densest neighborhoods I could find, usually Uptown or with Austin right off Guad by UT and 5th/Comal and my life now living in Denver which has a HUGE amount of MDUs/Duplexes/etc everywhere is so drastically different even though Denver has nowhere near the population of those. I haven't driven my car in months and nearly everyone I know lives in a 1-10 block radius. What was my previous mountain view from my 4 story townhouse is now an 11 story office building directly behind me that glares down at my patio, though, so there's that. I think it's coming with 400-1000 car parking spots (underground garage). We've been trying to get this (currently) low-traffic, low-mph throughfare street to completely ban car traffic and be turned into pedestrian/restaurant walking only, which it was during COVID and was wonderful, so that's probably dead in the water now.
droopyEyelids 2y ago
Would love if this could be built into a website that could analyze the distortions on any city automatically. probably a lot of issues getting an normalizing the data though.

44 points by mickgardner 2y ago

rybosworld 2y ago

Now do the major cities in Canada and U.S.

zip1234 2y ago
Would love to see San Francisco

voisin 2y ago

> Planners do important work moulding how our cities grow. Lost me at the first sentence. Let me fix it: “Planners follow the flavour of the day while committing the same sins over and over, their failures recognizable only in retrospect once replaced with a new (also faulty) paradigm based on centralized planning. Despite their repeated failures, as an industry or field of study they show no contrition and continue to act as if they and only they know what’s best.”

philips 2y ago
I have personally been involved in a few planning and “traffic engineering” issues where I live. And although this comment is heavy on the sarcasm it is very reflective of my experience. As a whole planning departments seem unable to defend decisions with relevant data and instead rely on indefensibly old manuals and standards. Some of which themselves use indefensible statistics- particularly traffic manuals (lets plan our roads based on a survey of a similar road in Atlanta in 1994!). Or worse municipalities follow each other in circles and trends. This would all be fine if the downstream effects weren’t affecting investment with a floor of tens of millions dollars. I don’t know what the answer is but Parking Reform, Strong Towns and Not Just Bikes are my north stars on this stuff. Do you have any others?
- voisin 2y ago
  I am not actually intending to be sarcastic at all - I think the entire industry is morally bankrupt. I am a real estate developer (re-developer actually - specializing in heritage buildings and other complicated adaptive reuse projects), so I deal with planners, committees, official plans, zoning by-laws and the building code daily. It is painful to see indefensible requirements being thrust on projects - even those projects (like mine) that the municipality seems predisposed to desire (saving old buildings, intensifying the core, etc etc). What’s worse, is to watch governments now rush to “fix” the mistakes that they are solely responsible for by punishing people - retroactively changing the rules - and costing average folk their savings. I refer to Canada specifically which made it so challenging to build housing for 40 years that we have a massive scarcity and housing crisis that is being “fixed” by taxing / fining people for having a second home.
  - BenFranklin100 2y ago
    What is your opinion on the recent SCOTUS decisions declaring that forcing developers to pay for community improvements qualifies as a taking? Do you see this having a material effect on housing development?
    - alistairSH 2y ago
      Do you have a link to a summary? I missed it, if it ever made the front page news. IANAdeveloper… if a developer is otherwise within code/zoning, SCOTUS is probably correct. If they’re asking for zoning changes, there should be room for negotiation on nearby improvements.
      - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        The takings clause was ratified in 1791. Unless the current zoning restrictions predate that, there is an element of cheating to imposing a restriction and then "negotiating" to remove it in exchange for something that would otherwise be a taking.
      - 2y ago
Angostura 2y ago
What's your preferred solution? Laissez-faire development?
- davidw 2y ago
  I think some of the discussion in this book - written by a former planner - is pretty sensible around what we should be doing: https://islandpress.org/books/arbitrary-lines#desc https://islandpress.org/books/arbitrary-lines#desc By getting planners out of some of the unnecessary minutiae of their jobs, they can, well, actually plan for things. Ensure that we have good street grids, land set aside for parks and schools that are harder to retrofit into a pure 'anything goes' system, and also try to do some planning to keep genuinely noxious uses away from where people live, rather than "keeping apartments away from the 'nice' neighborhoods".
- renewiltord 2y ago
  Whatever Tokyo is doing is nice. I liked it. Mixed use is fantastic.
- voisin 2y ago
  Yes. I think the canonical fear that there would be nuclear power plants next to daycares is nonsense and that private developers acting in their own interests would manage to identify market demand, experiment in fulfilling that demand, and the result would be the creation from the ground up of best practices for creating vibrant communities - until market preferences shift. And when those preferences shift I think private developers would be far quicker to adapt than central planners. I find it wild how much the west abhors eastern communist central planning and then adopts it for the very fabric of its communities.
alistairSH 2y ago
In my experience, local planners usually try to do what’s right/best/useful. And then end up hamstrung by state law or state DOT. I’m in Fairfax County, VA FWIW. I’ve seen them be quite proactive with plans near the Metro extension. But then VDOT does dumb shit like failing to build out multi-modal transit to meet the vision of the local planners.
k99x55 2y ago
The Lively & Liveable Neighbourhoods that are Illegal in Most of North America : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnKIVX968PQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnKIVX968PQ The Suburbs Are Bleeding America Dry | Climate Town (feat. Not Just Bikes) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfsCniN7Nsc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfsCniN7Nsc

Dig1t 2y ago

I personally tried to build more housing, I tried to buy 5 acres and build 5 homes on them. 5 acres could have easily held 5 large homes with big yards. The city zoning board denied me, saying that that 5-acre plot had been zoned for ONE house and an ADU of no larger than 300 sqft. That was when I realized why housing is so expensive.

WaxProlix 2y ago
I've looked at something similar. The path is to split the plot first via your county (or whatever) and then build.
- Dig1t 2y ago
  Correct, but the zoning board people outright told me they would deny the request to split the lot because it had already been zoned as “single family”.
  - WaxProlix 2y ago
    Strange, and frustrating sounding - 1a each is plenty to leave the resulting plots as conformant single family housing.
    - toast0 2y ago
      Where I'm at, our least dense zone is 1 unit per 2.5 acres. If the lot was almost, but not quite 5 acres, it couldn't be split without a variance. In theory, the state requires the city to allow for 2x population growth, and the zoning process directs where the growth should happen. In practice, the city pushes back so hard on everything, that the growth is going to happen wherever whoever has patience and money to spend on fighting the council wants to build. Everyone else is going to be frustrated by the long process of back and forth on pulling permits over many years and many dollars that actually the city won't let you do whatever you wanted to do anyway.
boplicity 2y ago

swozey 2y ago

> Giving up some aesthetic control means creating a city much more like Tokyo where building heights differ markedly even on lots next door to each other. I've lived a ridiculous number of major USA cities and I'll never forget what Houston, which is the only one I can think of that had no zoning, looked like. https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Weirdest-images-from-Houston-s-lack-of-zoning-laws-9171688.php https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Wei...

com2kid 2y ago
Here is a good article on Tokyo zoning: https://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html https://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.htm... You'll notice that the model is additive instead of exclusionary. Basically if a block is zoned light commercial, you can put stores, apartments, or single family homes on it. Here is a nice chart https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Lweabho82d0/U0HCJsQ3tbI/AAAAAAAAAys/Hy-TACJv1p4/s1600/Principle+JPzoning.jpg https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Lweabho82d0/U0HCJsQ3tbI/AAAAAAAAA... Tokyo does zoning right, and the simplest first step to solve housing problems that plague major American cities is to just adopt a model of zoning that is proven to work.
- swozey 2y ago
  > 1- Zoning is a *national law*, not a municipal by-law A national zoning law is very interesting. My biggest complaint about every city in TX I lived in (Houston, Austin, SATX, Dallas) was the lack of MDUs (among other things) causing them all to be painfully sparse. I lived in the densest neighborhoods I could find, usually Uptown or with Austin right off Guad by UT and 5th/Comal and my life now living in Denver which has a HUGE amount of MDUs/Duplexes/etc everywhere is so drastically different even though Denver has nowhere near the population of those. I haven't driven my car in months and nearly everyone I know lives in a 1-10 block radius. What was my previous mountain view from my 4 story townhouse is now an 11 story office building directly behind me that glares down at my patio, though, so there's that. I think it's coming with 400-1000 car parking spots (underground garage). We've been trying to get this (currently) low-traffic, low-mph throughfare street to completely ban car traffic and be turned into pedestrian/restaurant walking only, which it was during COVID and was wonderful, so that's probably dead in the water now.

droopyEyelids 2y ago

Would love if this could be built into a website that could analyze the distortions on any city automatically. probably a lot of issues getting an normalizing the data though.