[asdff]

Infill development used to be allowed in California but it stopped in the early 70s when communities turned to zoning to exclude blacks and browns after redlining was made illegal. The many sundown towns did not go without a fight. There are still some pieces of what that infil looked like. The bog standard brick 5 story building you see all over east coast cities can be found in california in parts, often sticking out like a sore thumb because nothing has been allowed to be built to that height since the late 1960s/early 1970s. The dingbat is another example of infill housing that was since made illegal although it was quite popular. Most blocks you see with some sort of apartments were at one point single family home lots, but this sort of development carefully limited to the blocks you now see them instead of widespread throughout the area.

There was even a time when very large highrises were being constructed e.g. Wilshire Blvd's condo canyon. But that was also seen as a blight and quickly stopped in its tracks from expanding beyond the immediate arterial frontage. All hell would surely break loose if you allowed for student housing to be built on the eastern edge of UCLA instead of contained in the sliver of land between the school and veterans cemetery I guess. Unfortunately for the student body, the school is shoehorned in between two prestigious country clubs, and it is clear where priorities lay among local leadership.

[socalgal2]

Communities did not turn to zoning in response to infill being disallowed. Zoning was around since at least 1917 and already for that purpose.

Zoning in the 70s was more a response to (1) homeownership property value protection (2) nimbys being given the power to block projects like they still do today, especially in highly "progressive" cities. The more progressive, the harder to build (3) people claiming expansion was bad for the environment.

[asdff]

>Communities did not turn to zoning in response to infill being disallowed.

??? Zoning is the mechanism to disallow infill, it can't come in response to it. The book "The Color of Law" by Richard Rothstein covers how zoning as used as a new tool for racial exclusion in its third chapter. Indeed, modern socal remains a highly segregated area thanks to zoning decisions that ensure working class people, who are predominantly nonwhite, will find no suitable housing they might afford in the various lily white strongholds.