[maratd]

> for example, a major trash incineration facility on a plot of land in the middle of your quiet residential neighborhood

We can either chat about the 0.01% of scenarios ... or the other 99.99%. The other 99.99% look extremely similar ... it's towns not allowing two-family homes in one-family zones. Three-family homes in two-family or one-family zones. We're not even talking about apartment buildings. All of those are built using "variances", which just illustrate how absurd the system is.

Oh and speaking about your example? I live in a two-family home in a two-family zone ... next to a bus depot. How you ask? Well, they just got a variance I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[vanusa]

Again you're hyperbolizing.

The outright toxic projects that developers and city leaders routinely propose run at a least a couple of orders of magnitude above 0.01 percent.

Then there's a huge fat tail of other cases (big box retail, correctional facilities, treatment centers... not to mention freeway expansions and so forth) that, lo and behold -- not everyone who loves within a short radius of is a huge fan of, to say the least.

The point is - it's a grey scale, and you're painting it as a binary. It's not.

[maratd]

> Again you're hyperbolizing.

I am not.

> The outright toxic projects that developers and city leaders routinely propose run at a least a couple of orders of magnitude above 0.01 percent.

This is true, but does not contradict my point. How many tiny projects are never run through anything or even considered because regular people don't have a mountain of cash/lawyers/etc. and simply comply with the law, while all those toxic projects hire lawyers to get variances?

How many two-family homes are never built or even considered because the zone is one-family? How many housing units have we lost this way?

[vanusa]

How many housing units have we lost this way?

We can certainly ask all kinds of questions about whether some forms of zoning are a good idea or not. Certainly many are outdated, illogical and/or counterproductive.

But the point is that everyone (whether they say so or not) acknowledged that at least some baseline of codified land use regulation -- a.k.a. "zoning" -- is necessary.

It's just a question of what kind -- and who should benefit.