[jjk166]

> How do you imagine YIMBY relaxing zoning and allowing things at lower cost and not simultaneously allowing people with money to push through what they want?

Relaxing zoning laws never meant throwing them completely out the window. It has always been a matter of pruning zoning rules that overly restrict land use to the point that minor deviation from the norm is impossible.

[saltcured]

Whatever the level of relaxation, I don't understand how you think it is going to enable low cost development of your preferred things, while excluding those with money from absolutely pushing rules to their limits to build their preferred things..?

[jjk166]

Let's say the law is currently "this area is zoned for single family residences limited to at most two stories" and you change that law to "this area is zoned for residences limited to at most four stories." You have relaxed the law. It doesn't guarantee that you will get higher density housing, but the zoning obstacle has been removed and in many cases that is the sticking point.

Such a change does not permit a massive datacenter, or an oil refinery, or even a 5 story apartment building to be built. The laws aren't being pushed, they are being purposefully changed.

Now if some city council members get an attractive offer "for their constituents" to rezone a plot of land to build a datacenter on, that doesn't really have anything to do with the original zoning restrictions, and certainly is not affected by the YIMBY efforts. Zoning reform is not a strategy to reduce corruption.