[wonder_er]

Huzzah! Another aficionado of land use issues!

Alain Bertaud wrote a book called "order without design". He's an urban economist, and... his book is all a city planner needs to do their job correctly.

Towards the end of the book he talks about the indonesian Kampung, briefly touched upon in this interview here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-11/urban-pla...

I had long wanted to visit this sort of place, so in Bali, I walked into (and around) many, many, many kampungs, and sure enough, they were beautiful, affordable, and served the people that lived in and around them so well.

I believe all 'big' cities have adopted the 'american'/euclidean zoning version of land use policy, which was implemented by southerners in the 1920s to implement a regime of social control, allowing one ethnic group to use the political process to dominate another ethnic group. Jakarta follows the american land use policy, with the expected deleterious effects.

more on the land use policy as social control/ethnic cleansing: https://josh.works/full-copy-of-1922-atlanta-zone-plan

I'd strongly recommend getting a copy of Alain's book. It's the most concise take on land use policy I've encountered, and I've sorta 'read the canon' when it comes to these kinds of things.

Another recommendation: "The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal as Ethnic Cleansing" https://www.fidelitypress.org/slaughter-of-cities

I write about all of this stuff on my website (in my profile) and tiktok. I talk too much about zoning-as-ethnic-cleansing, according to some people, but i don't mind. https://www.tiktok.com/@josh_exists

[readonthegoapp]

i took a quick look at "Order Without Design" and am not digging what I've read so far.

to decide whether something might be worth a read, i usually try to get a quick feel for it from the title, subtitle, author, author's affiliations, the book's recommendations, etc.

in this case, it _seems_ like what I'm going to find as I cruise thru a couple articles and youtubes and possibly even the book itself as some point (tho, likely not), is just another bad justification for allowing markets (i.e. capital / investors / rich people / the right people) to shape cities -- or shape them more than they're typically allowed to.

The full book title is:

  Order without Design: How Markets Shape Cities

https://www.amazon.com/Order-without-Design-Markets-Cities/d...

if a book about... well, anything... mentions markets, it's probably going to be pro-markets -- that is, 'poor people must obey the markets', not 'markets are created by humans to _serve_ humans'.

couple of the recommendations come from City Journal (hard core conservative city planning, or non-planning), and Richard Florida (hard core liberal/monied city planning).

but, will check it out some more -- maybe i'll be surprised.

[wonder_er]

For what it's worth, those articles and reviews that you mentioned seem to come out of Western and capitalist mindsets, but the author of the book is very French and very much not of that genre.

I think it's likely enough that you might be surprised that it's worth getting the book and seeing what you think.

Of course you might not like it, but I am so starved for novelty that I will explore opportunities for that dopamine hit on principle even if they don't all pan out.

If you read it and find it novel and interesting, I would be honored if you let me know. My email is in my profile.

The author and his late wife are fascinating. Look up the 'order without design podcast', and you're bound to be entertained.

I'm already honored by the amount of due diligence you have done, so even if you don't get the book or get it and don't follow up with me, you've given me a lovely thing, kind internet stranger.

[selimthegrim]

Euclidean zoning is named after Euclid, Ohio, which is manifestly not in the South.

[wonder_er]

The zoning regime that was invented in the south went to the supreme Court as a result of it being implemented in the town of Euclid Ohio.

So you're right, Ohio isn't the south, but the regime that was approved by the supreme Court was invented by essentially the mayor of Atlanta.

It is just a re-implementation of Jim Crowe. The guy that invented it said:

> To maintain the harmonious relations between the races, care has been given to ensure adequate separation between them.

He was dscribing r1 verse r2 zoning. Pretty much every municipality in America still has r1, r2, r3 zoning on the books.

The guy that invented it said r1 zoning was for the white, r2 zoning was for the colored, r3 zoning was for the undecided.

When I bought a house in Golden, it was in an r2 neighborhood.

R1 is suburbia. It's genuinely horrifying that this travesty of a legal regime has not been ended yet, but most politically powerful white people can't be bothered to do a modicum of research, and they believe the propaganda they've been fed that says suburban neighborhoods, maintained by r1 zoning, are pleasant places to live.