[dmix]

Zoning laws basically make this the reality in every major city's downtown area. They aren't allowing offices or building new multistory buildings in the safe NIMBY areas of cities.

It might sound like an overt policy but in reality it's just the easiest one without doing any real reform or dealing with any of the problems. Like all municipal housing/development policy in the last two decades.

Zoning rarely changes, what's does always change a) the natural expansion of economically productive downtown areas and b) the degree to how bad it is in those very high traffic areas while everyone pretends you can just easily not visit those areas and be fine (despite there being few options to work or build elsewhere).

[jwestbury]

Bad zoning policy is probably the largest driver of most things that are killing cities -- it encourages wealth disparity, bad land use, increased emissions, and concentration of crime. Unfortunately, wealth is a driver of bad zoning policy, so it's a bit hard to get out from under it -- and some of the examples of "fixing" zoning are equally terrible, e.g. Houston's complete lack of zoning and incredible sprawl.