[apparent]

Should people also be allowed to move into neighborhoods that are zoned as suburban (not so much in SF as in nearby areas), and have them remain that way?

I get the libertarian impulse to let people do what they want with their property, but it seems like part of that freedom should be the right to move into areas where there are zoning restrictions.

[Schiendelman]

Zoning should always have been unconstitutional, and the court case enabling it proved that.

The Supreme Court upheld it a hundred years ago, in 1926, after batting down previous efforts by the same people to explicitly ban black people from neighborhoods. They realized that since black families couldn't afford houses by themselves (they needed to buy houses with two or three families together), they could get around it with single family zoning. Ever wondered why it isn't called "house" zoning? Because it was segregation.

The appellate court in the case threw out zoning, because it was so obvious that it was about race. The Supreme Court overturned it by ignoring the entire appellate court decision and defining a building itself (apartments) as a nuisance, instead of making the petitioners regulate actual behaviors. Because the behaviors weren't the problem, it was the black people they didn't want.

Sorry - this riles me up. :)

You should absolutely not be able to have a say over how much housing your neighbor builds. Sure, if they make noise, or bad smells, or bright lights, THAT you should be able to regulate. But the outcomes of having a say over how much housing your neighbor can build is the strongest root of a whole host of issues - from CO2 to obesity to high commute times and traffic to municipal budget bloat. It causes sprawl. Increasingly, parts of the left and right are starting to realize we need to overturn it.

[robocat]

We have zoning in New Zealand and it wasn't started by segregation.

Zoning has other reasons than racism.

Oversimplifying things down to single causes is an error of thinking.

[Schiendelman]

You've never heard of papakainga?

Zoning and land use code in New Zealand is one of the better examples of structural racism.

In housing law in the United States, we've figured out that because people often use feelings rather than clear statements for their reasoning, we had to pay attention to disparate impact, rather than discriminatory intent.

What you'll find is that in nearly every country, zoning and similar laws originate in or were dramatically expanded to exclude wealth generation by minority groups.

[robocat]

I think you're talking about something different.

My context is discriminatory urban zoning (à la exclusionary zoning or redlining in the US).

I am not sure there are any examples of that for urban zoning in New Zealand. Please enlighten me if you know better.

I agree there is plenty of history of terrible treatment of maori and their land in NZ, but that is a different topic and not relevant. I admit I am ignorant about the history of urban planning in NZ.

[apparent]

What part of the Constitution is violated by zoning laws?

I have heard of laws that prevent the construction of structures that shade other properties (skyscrapers) or block views of the ocean. If those are apparently legal, why not a law that says you can't build a big apartment complex that would greatly increase traffic, for example?

[Schiendelman]

See the Village of Euclid v Ambler Realty case, which is what I'm referencing in my long comment. A federal appeals court found that those restrictions were racially motivated and cause racial segregation, which is unconstitutional (and we've studied this to death since to confirm it). The Supreme Court, nine white guys... ignored that finding when overturning the appellate court decision.

[apparent]

> The Supreme Court, nine white guys... ignored that finding when overturning the appellate court decision.

Higher courts are allowed to overturn lower courts. That's kind of the whole point of the hierarchy.

But regardless, that case was from 100 years ago. Are you saying that the reason people enact zoning laws now is the same? I love living in a suburb and would be equally displeased whether my neighborhood turned into apt complexes, regardless of the complexion of the residents.

[Schiendelman]

Of course you would. That's why it sticks around, because you get regulatory capture. It's the same reason we don't let a CEO write the rules for regulating their own company's competition. That's another more modern reason why it is unconstitutional, it just hasn't been challenged.

[apparent]

Perhaps I have a different understanding of "regulatory capture" than you do. To me, it means that the regulators are captured by the entities they are supposed to be regulating. It often happens when the main job prospects for people in an industry are either as regulators or in industry. If an oil company offers jobs to policy maker whose boss gets voted out of Congress, they can "capture" the regulators, who won't want to kill their golden ticket.

I'm unclear how this applies to zoning rules voted on by the people who live in an area. There is not an intermediary "zoning regulator" who is capturing anyone. Similarly, there is not a constituency that is being "captured" inappropriately. It is literally just a group of people deciding how they want to live.

If this is regulatory capture, then so is having laws against automatic weapons and speeding.

[scoofy]

Yes, but not forever!!!

Growth has to happen in the long run. We have the same zoning as we did before the people looking for housing were born.

We can have incremental changes, or we can have sudden change. It's going to happen predictably or with a ton of political conflict. The better solution is always to allow a self-reinforcing pressure release on housing. I've long said that everyone should be allow, by right, to expand their housing by 2x the median building unit within a half mile radius, by units, sqft, and height.

Suburban neighborhoods then slowly turn into duplexes over one generation, then row houses over another, then finally start building up after a third generation. Predictable, fair, and sustainable.

[Schiendelman]

If you make it slow, you cause the same issues - and then the neighborhood just says "well if it's FOUR generations that's not too bad, is it?" And because the people who don't get to move in later don't get a say... it gets worse forever.

It's insidious, but as long as you allow people to regulate how much housing their neighbors can produce, it always gets this bad eventually.

[scoofy]

It’s self reinforcing. When demand is highest, building will be highest, and median unit size will increase more rapidly, allowing more building, allowing more units.

The pace is limited, but the URBAN output increases exponentially, which is exactly what we want.

[Schiendelman]

I wish it worked that way, but from my nearly 20 years of urban land use policy study and writing, I have seen tons of evidence that it does not.

The problem is that the most in demand areas get new buildings at 4-6 stories, and then you get locked up - the airspace above them becomes unavailable for 50-100 years, when there was market demand for some taller buildings from the beginning. It's the same "push down and spread out" that causes sprawl, just more localized.

[scoofy]

I mean, yes, when the incentives are the literal opposite of this policy, the the outcomes will be the literal opposite of what we want.

People respond to incentives.

[bombcar]

It takes an awful lot of incentives to knock down a "usable" structure. I'd love to build higher-density right here, right on my lot, but unless I squeeze something in on the same lot, I'm out $150k just to start. $150k covers quite a bit of gas to the lot 2 miles away that's empty.

[xnx]

> Growth has to happen in the long run.

This is not sustainable. The good news is that, due to demographic shifts, we might have a glut of housing in 20 years.

[Schiendelman]

Japan is shrinking. Tokyo, however, is growing. It would not be good news if our cities had a glut of housing. We have three billion people of rural->urban shift we still need to do.

[scoofy]

Localized growth has nothing to do with total population.

These urban housing crises in every major western country have nothing to do with population growth and everything to do with population concentration.

We should expect this problem to accelerate during periods of population decline, because there will be even stronger economic incentives to move into concentrated population centers.

[pixl97]

When all areas have zoning restrictions you've reversed the problem again removing peoples freedom.

[HDThoreaun]

No, you have no right to force your neighbors to behave exactly as you want.