[astrange]

Residential-only zoning is "the bad kind of zoning". It wasn't invented to keep factories away from homes; it was /literally/ invented in Berkeley to stop Chinese immigrants from being able to afford homes by running laundry businesses out of them.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

Right - but that part of residential zoning still stays, right?

It's just that you can build a duplex on a "single-family residential lot".

But you still can't teach piano lessons out of your house without one of your neighbors constantly calling the city and complaining about how you're causing traffic problems, right?

And you definitely can't wash other people's clothes or dishes in your house, right??

[rsync]

"Residential-only zoning is "the bad kind of zoning"."

I wish I could mind-meld with you and transmit the memories and experiences of growing up in a residential area with no zoning.

You know that sci-fi trope where the empath gets the memory dump and breaks away screaming and crying because they can't handle the trauma that comes through ?

It would be like that.

You think you'll get cute shops and pop-ups and delightful mixed-use and stimulating workshop spaces and crafty folks doing things artisanally.

What you will actually get is half-built cars. Everywhere. You will get mobile homes and immobile RVs. You will get horses. Not rich-people horses, but "Grandma died and she had a horse and nobody knew what to do with it so we fenced part of the front yard" horses. Someone will disconnect from city sewer because they "know how to build septic". Someone will get llamas.

You think I'm making this up and I promise you I am not.

You've lived so long in a nicely regulated, rules-based order that you have no idea the kind of bullshit people engage in the minute the rules go away.

[danaris]

> What you will actually get is half-built cars. Everywhere. You will get mobile homes and immobile RVs. You will get horses. Not rich-people horses, but "Grandma died and she had a horse and nobody knew what to do with it so we fenced part of the front yard" horses. Someone will disconnect from city sewer because they "know how to build septic". Someone will get llamas.

a) It sounds like what you're saying is "you'll get poor people". There are several things wrong with that, the first one being the rampant classism inherent in it.

b) So you'll get horses, and mobile homes. So what? Oooh, are you afraid your property values will drop? Deal with it. That's a small price to pay to enable the kinds of walkable neighborhoods mixed zoning allows, and the kind of rejuvenated communities it creates.

c) Allowing residential and commercial zones to mix has nothing to do with people trying to build their own septic systems.

All in all, it sounds to me like you experienced what happens when you live in a lower-income area, that happens not to have strong zoning laws, and your takeaway from that experience is that the lack of zoning caused the lower-income parts. Correlation is not causation, and not letting rich people stuff poor people away in a corner and forget about them is absolutely part of what we need to do.

[astrange]

> a) It sounds like what you're saying is "you'll get poor people".

It's more like trashy (rural coded?) middle class people I think. Collectors of broken cars and llamas aren't that poor! Similarly, you see pictures of people in, say, West Virginia with tons of stuff in their yard and kinda messy houses, but they're homeowners in a rich first world country and I suspect they're often pretty well off for the area. It's more of a personality thing.

The confusing part for me was that there are mobile homes and RVs everywhere in Silicon Valley because there aren't enough homes due to the super strict zoning.

[rsync]

All I am trying to share is that when rules are absent, behavior gets worse than you expect, in ways that beggar belief.

That is not limited to “poor people” (your words).

[danaris]

None of the things you've listed—except possibly the ones trying to self-install a septic system when they already have municipal sewer access—sound like "bad behavior." (And, again, that has nothing to do with zoning.)

What it sounds like is the stereotypical upper-middle-class white suburban boogeyman of "Those People" that you don't want around, because they bring down property values, with a healthy helping of implied racism and explicit classism.

Furthermore, there's no reason why zoning laws couldn't be selectively adjusted and relaxed—for instance, to ensure no heavy industry goes in right in the middle of a residential area, where it's more likely to be disruptive to sleep and potentially polluting.

Acting like relaxing zoning laws to allow for corner stores and similar things will bring us to a Mad Max-style wasteland is exactly the kind of rampant NIMBYism that got us into this mess in the first place.

[rsync]

"What it sounds like is the stereotypical upper-middle-class white suburban boogeyman of "Those People" that you don't want around, because they bring down property values, with a healthy helping of implied racism and explicit classism."

I don't know what it "sounds like" and I cannot speak to your stereotypes.

I no longer have any interaction with residential property, zoning, development, or any of these housing politics. I am not affected by "property values".

I look at these issues as an interested, outside observer and I have tremendous enthusiasm for urban spaces, walkable cities, mixed use environs, etc.

But at the same time I appreciate well regulated[1] single family neighborhoods/developments and while I don't live anywhere like that I appreciate the reasons that someone might have for preferring that.

I hope that it is useful and interesting to you to learn that there are a variety of practical and aesthetic reasons for (not agreeing with you) that come from ideas and experience that (aren't the stereotypes you have in mind).

[1] This is the correct term. Arguing for abolishment of residential zoning is arguing for deregulation.

[stonogo]

> I no longer have any interaction with residential property,

I bet you do, unless you have moved to orbit.

[leereeves]

> behavior gets worse than you expect, in ways that beggar belief.

Broken cars, RVs, mobile homes, and animals. How did that cause such trauma?

I'd take all of that over an intrusive HOA.

[mariosisters]

Everyone says that until their neighbor’s hobby includes heavy machinery at 6am. Then they say “well no that’s this other non-zoning, non-HOA type of law we really do need”.

But really, people want to do what they want, and other folks don’t get to. That’s the whole of it.

[amanaplanacanal]

You've just described all of law, not zoning. Getting rid of zoning does not automatically lead to anarchy.

[lotsoweiners]

Cool. Live in that neighborhood. I want to live in a neighborhood without that and will gladly pay an HOA to regulate the riff-raff.

[UncleMeat]

Living in an RV or a mobile home is "bad behavior"?

[astrange]

I've been to Japan (+ several other countries that aren't the US). It's pretty nice there.

As to whether or not zoning laws are what prevent people from owning horses, that's not clear to me. But a law saying you can't build a bookstore or apartment on the lot doesn't seem very related.

[rsync]

"As to whether or not zoning laws are what prevent people from owning horses, that's not clear to me. But a law saying you can't build a bookstore or apartment ..."

Everyone thinks they want to "get rid of zoning" but, of course, there are "obvious" rules we would all need to follow and "of course you can't do that" ... and it quickly becomes murky as to where "zoning" begins and ends and which regulations are "legitimate" or not.

Either people can communally decide what rules they want to enact or they can't.

If they can, restricting multi-family housing is as legitimate as anything else in a democracy. Like allowing or disallowing horses. Or limits to vehicles-on-blocks-in-the-front-yard. Or ad-hoc septic systems.

[rcpt]

> people can communally decide

How big is this community? Who decides that?

[jojobas]

In Japan you just don't do any of those things due to exceptionally high, by European or American standard, social pressure do to The Right Thing.

Or, at the very least, to not do anything out of the ordinary.

[astrange]

Out of Tokyo and San Francisco, which one requires all new buildings to go to subjective design reviews where your neighbors complain about shadows and tell you they don't like the color you plan to paint it and the style of windows facing the road?

Hint: it's not Tokyo, which actually does have a fair number of old ugly poorly-maintained buildings scattered around random nice neighborhoods. Which is fine and not hurting anyone.

[midoridensha]

Tokyo actually does have rules about shadows: new building plans have to show how the new building will affect the sunlight of neighboring buildings. I think there's some limitations along these lines, but not a lot. But yeah, you can make your building as ugly as you want.

Anyway, those older, ugly, poorly-maintained buildings eventually get torn down and replaced with something better, because the land value is very high. It's much more laissez-faire than the US and property rights are much, much stronger (the idea that you should mostly be able to do what you want with your property).

[ryan_lane]

I was recently looking to buy a house, and the agent said this is the reason for the weird shapes of housing. You can't build a building in such a way that reduces the light into bedrooms. There's a certain amount of light available for a room that allows it to be classified as a bedroom or not. Hence why you'll see places listed as a 3LDK with a "storage room", rather than a 4LDK in some cases.

[jojobas]

I'm not talking about building houses in absence of personal contact, I'm talking about keeping horses, llamas and half-built cars in a residential area.

[astrange]

What's the difference that isn't a posthoc fallacy?

Cause suburban Americans are famous busybodies. There's no way you can outdo them. They think anyone walking past their house is casing it for a robbery and will call the police and post on Nextdoor about it.

[ryan_lane]

You can't buy a car unless you have proof you have a parking spot, so the cars part is out. Same deal with RVs. No street parking, no RV.

There's no space for people to have a horse.

There's plenty of places that I think everyone would call a "shack" made from old tin that's probably been around since the 50s or so, and is not really any different from a mobile home. So that exists here and people are generally OK with it.

People wouldn't disconnect from the sewer to do septic. That isn't a zoning issue, it's a public health one, and it's obviously illegal.

Honestly, none of the hypotheticals described have to do with zoning. Social pressure to do the right thing is a thing here, but not the only reason that things aren't super chaotic.

[lamontcg]

The article is about a "builders remedy" around zoning. It isn't going to change anything about cars, mobile homes, RVs, horses, llamas or sewers.

[mc32]

I think it's reasonable to invoke Chesterton's Fence here. We have to fully understand the potential consequences before enacting something potentially rife with unintended consequences before dismantling a system.

We've lived with Zoning over a century and we ought to have an understanding of what unwanted changes could come about if that were suddenly lifted. It's not that we _should not_ do it but we should make changes in a measured, purposeful and understood manner so we don't end up like unregulated favelas (not in the sense of being mostly poor, but in the sense that anything goes.)

[beebmam]

Correct me if I'm misrepresenting you here, but are you claiming that the reason that something is invented is always the reason why it continues to be used?

[astrange]

Now it's probably because people don't like "traffic" outside their homes, but basically yes, that's why single-family zoning is still in place. It's extremely silly to want to ban eg corner stores in your neighborhood.

In SF where people have discovered "left-NIMBYism", people will now argue that keeping it is fighting racism, but then if you go into the suburbs they'll still happily argue the original position.

[gameman144]

The idea that the reason something was made defines its current reason for existing seems demonstrably wrong, though.

Consider the microwave magnetron: invented to mess with radar, but now in every kitchen.

Maybe the reasons haven't changed in thisinstance, but holding that as a rule seems pretty incorrect.

[astrange]

Luckily we don't have to argue about abstractions since we can just go look at land use.

I do think a lot of people want to keep single family zoning because they think it makes their properties more valuable but 1. historical segregation is part of that and 2. if your home price goes up, that only makes you richer as long as you don't want to buy any other homes that've also gone up.

[chung8123]

People want single family zoning because they enjoy it more. People wanting single family housing is what makes it valuable not the single family housing itself.

[fragmede]

But also people want single family housing because US made apartments are complete shit. They're poorly insulated to heat and sound which means all sorts of unnecessary interaction with your immediate neighbors, making apartment living that much worse, driving the demand of single family housing up.

[lotsoweiners]

Yeah exactly. While I obviously care about my property value, my interest is in living amongst other property owning families.

[danaris]

Things can be used for other reasons than the reason they were invented.

It's important to pay attention to the reasons things were invented, especially things that allow different kinds of social control.

Both of these things can be true at the same time.

[edgyquant]

You should clarify “in SF” since this isn’t true for the actual history of residential zoning (which originated in New York)

[mherdeg]

Gosh, growing up near Cleveland I always thought zoning "started" in Euclid Heights. I guess there are lots of different firsts?

[leviathant]

Feels a bit like the oddly pervasive "Our city is x on the top 10 list of places Russia would nuke first because of local industry y" myth that existed in places all across America.

[Phrenzy]

Imagine the post WWIII disappointment while walking around your pristine neighborhood.

"Nobody thought enough about us to want to eliminate us."

[stonogo]

Berkeley legislated residential zoning four months before New York did.

[astrange]

Well, this article is about the Bay Area.

[occz]

I agree. Note how I didn't use residential only-zones, instead opting for residential zones, which can and should be mixed-use. This is not to say that there are some incompatible land uses to be considered - industrial uses can broadly be considered to be incompatible with residential uses, for example.

[pengaru]

Not saying zoning isn't abused, but this is the kind of outcome you get without zoning laws too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdDuHxwD5R4

[eric-hu]

I did a search to check the history of this claim, but maybe I wasn’t searching for the right thing. Would you mind sharing a link?

[jai_]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-family_zoning

It's the first sentence in the History section

[DiggyJohnson]

I admittedly rolled my eyes at the WP link. To atone for this, I’ve copy and pasted the relevant references from that line in the History section:

[1] Baldassari, Erin; Solomon, Molly (October 5, 2020). "The Racist History of Single-Family Home Zoning". NPR. Archived from the original on November 14, 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20201114004918/https://www.kqed....

[3] Hansen, Louis (March 1, 2021). "Is this the end of single-family zoning in the Bay Area? San Jose, Berkeley, other cities consider sweeping changes". San Jose Mercury News. https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/03/01/is-this-the-end-of-si...

[4] Ruggiero, Angela (February 24, 2021). "Berkeley to end single-family residential zoning, citing racist ties". San Jose Mercury News. https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/02/24/berkeley-to-end-singl...

[5] Yelimeli, Supriya (February 24, 2021). "Berkeley denounces racist history of single-family zoning, begins 2-year process to change general plan - Council unanimously approved a resolution that will work toward banning single-family zoning". Berkeleyside. https://web.archive.org/web/20210301140957/https://www.berke...

[8] Baldassari, Erin (March 13, 2021). "Facing Housing Crunch, California Cities Rethink Single-Family Neighborhoods". NPR. Archived from the original on March 31, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20210331194917/https://www.npr.o...

[swatcoder]

Accurate or not, I hate that all of these references are from one 6-month regional news cycle. They may as well be 1 citation, rather than 5. The excess just makes the inclusion of claim look more motivated by political investment than a desire to be informative.

[stonogo]

I hate that people's instinct is to play 4D chess with the intent of some random Wiki editor instead of even glancing at the data contained in the references. Here are some aged references for your discerning palate:

Density Zoning and Class Segregation in U.S. Metropolitan Areas (2010) https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6237.2010.00724.x

Distributive politics, ward representation, and the spread of zoning (1993) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01047991

Urban Land Developers and the Origins of Zoning Laws: The Case of Berkeley (1986) https://escholarship.org/uc/item/26b8d8zh

Fifty Years of Zoning (1966) https://www.jstor.org/stable/25723800

[Cardinal7167]

Why did you roll your eyes at it if it provided exactly the correct type of referential value it’s supposed to?

[DiggyJohnson]

Well because I had to click thru WP itself.

Also, as a sibling comment put it, it does weird me out that all cited sources are from such a limited pool.

[edgyquant]

This disputes the claim it originated in SF and the reasons listed. Odd that Wikipedia is centered on SF and its claim is backed up by (several experts believe.) Looks to me like another example of Wikipedia pushing a narrative and pretending it’s fact.

https://economics21.org/history-zoning-america-flexible-hous...

[enragedcacti]

Zoning and SFH zoning are aren't the same thing, and wikipedia concurs with your article w.r.t. early US zoning policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoning#United_States

Looks to me like another example of HN guy pushing a narrative and pretending it’s fact. Or maybe someone just made a mistake and a more charitable reading would show that there is perhaps not a conspiracy going on but instead just a misunderstanding.

[wnissen]

If you have an interest, the most comprehensive book I'm aware of is "Zoned in the USA: The Origins and Implications of American Land-Use Regulation" by Sonia Hirt. Cornell University Press. 2014. ISBN 978-0-8014-5305-2.

She's the one quoted in the LA Times article: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-01-19/single-fam...

Full disclosure, I was so impressed with Prof. Hirt's book that I wrote her Wikipedia page.

[astrange]

Also The Color of Law: https://www.epi.org/publication/the-color-of-law-a-forgotten...

[shkkmo]

If you want something more rigourous than a wikipedia article, that article's oldest source is the 2020 NPR article which links to this paper: http://www.schoolinfosystem.org/pdf/2014/06/04SegregationinC...

TLDR: the real estate developer that founded Claremont (Mason-McDuffie Co spearheaded by Duncan McDuffie) imposed conditions in its titles that explicitly bared non-whites and prohibited commercial enterprises. However, those title conditions couldn't control neighboring areas, so McDuffie pushed to get zoning laws passed that were explicitly inspired by anti-chinese laundry regulations in LA. The Berkley regulation was "expedited" to prevent a "negro dance hall" from opening.

To me, the existence of the anti-commercial provisions in the McDuffie title restrictions in addition to explicit racial exclusions indicates that racial exclusion was not the only motivating factor in adopting single family zoning laws. However, the context and immediate usage does make it pretty clear that racial exclusion was a significant part of the motivation.

[nemo44x]

No it’s just completely untrue. This is a common tactic today to say something was created for <racist|sexist|homophobic> purposes so the entire concept is bad naturally.

See how activists say policing was invented to catch slaves or some ridiculous claim. There’s a bunch of others.

[pwinnski]

Yes, it is absolutely ridiculous that slave patrols existed and formed the basis for later police departments in the south. It is also ridiculous that labor-busting squads existed in the north, which formed the basis for later police departments in the north.

The history is there, it is what it is, as ridiculous as that is. You might argue that modern police have far outgrown their origins, and then it would be up to readers to decide which whether your claim is also ridiculous, given how many police departments generally exhibit qualities consonant with their origins.

[nemo44x]

Ancient Rome had police. Get real. Boston has the oldest police department. And although some slave states used police for it, it’s ridiculous to compare todays policing as anything like it.

[pwinnski]

Yes, the slave society of Rome had a police force within the city, which was mostly made up of slaves under supervision. The two main functions of this police force? Fighting fires and catching runaway slaves. So the gap between "police" and "slave patrols" has been nonexistent for a very long time.

I already mentioned that northern states had union-busting squads who formed the basis of modern police forces, so yes, I'm aware of Boston, too.

Once again, you use that word. I agree that it's ridiculous to compare today's policing to anything like historic policing or ancient slave patrols. Today's police are far less accountable, more violent, and heavily armed.

[pwinnski]

I guess there's been a long weekend, keeping us both away, but since you brought up ancient Rome, I keep remembering fun things from reading about this a couple of years back, inspired by Mike Duncan's excellent podcast on the history of Rome.

Within the great city, there were, as you pointed out, police. As I pointed out, they were mostly there for fire-fighting and as a slave patrol, and were themselves made up of mostly-slaves. But you might be thinking, what about investing crimes? That's what police do when there aren't traffic stops to make, right?

In that great city, if you wanted a crime investigated, you did it yourself. Evidence gathered? Find it yourself. If you wanted to accuse someone of something, you grabbed them and at least one witness and dragged them before a judge. So justice, what there was of it, was largely available to the wealthy, who could afford to hire people to drag other people before judges, and if you were a poor person wanting to accuse a rich person of a crime, well, good luck with that.

So modern cops might have a really poor clearance rate for most crimes, barely exceeding half even for murder[0], but at least they try, which is more than can be said for Roman vigiles urbani. And at least they pretend to be impartial, even if one can clearly see that crimes are prosecuted unevenly, and that US prisons are filled with more than their fair share of the poor.

0. https://www.statista.com/statistics/194213/crime-clearance-r...

[astrange]

I said literally and I meant literally. You can just look up the Berkeley city council meeting minutes! That's why they said they were doing it!

[klipt]

But are you sure Berkeley was the first place in the world to create a residential only zoning? If not, they don't deserve the inventor label.

[pwinnski]

Okay, they didn't invent racist policies that persist to this day, they just furthered their racist goals by using existing policies that persist to this day. Better?

[stonogo]

No, it's completey true. The first businesses affected by Berkeley residential zoning were Chinese and Japanese laundries (c.f. Ordninance 575-NS). Another zoning ordinance was passed to block a "negro dance hall." See Pollard's "Outline of the Law of Zoning in the United States," and Paul Ong "An Ethnic Trade: The Chinese Laundries in Early California." (Journal of Ethnic Studies, Winter 1981)

[outworlder]

> This is a common tactic today to say something was created for <racist|sexist|homophobic> purposes so the entire concept is bad naturally.

I've yet to see a good counter-example.

[gowld]

It's a shame that our national history is ridiculous.