[amluto]

I’ve seen one Bay Area use of zoning that I like. In Palo Alto, there are areas zoned for retail (which I think means retail or restaurant, but must be things that interact with customers who walk in). This helps for a somewhat odd reason: retail space is quite a bit less expensive than office space or housing, and property owners would often like to convert to office space. But doing so at scale would introduce a tragedy of the commons: office space is desirable in part because of the presence of retail!

(I’m not saying the economics have to work this way — I can easily imagine that more relaxed zoning and development rules would equalize the values of different types of space. But in the mean time, this policy at least appears to benefit people who live or work in the area.)