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the thing about malls is that they're basically a modern form of the shopping arcade, which predates cars by a lot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcade_(architecture) "we put a bunch of shops next to each other and roofed it over to keep the rain out" isn't an idea that requires innovations in tax law to prosper https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5i0QdBlX1c
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Jan 18, 2022 22:12
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Mooseontheloose posted:Yah, I think part of this is to (at least where I live) is also the lack of mass transit interconnection. I live in Massachusetts but buses outside of 128 are practically non-existent and DO NOT connect to the surrounding communities. I live 5 minutes from a commuter rail, 20 mins from another but there is no bus route connecting these two points which could connect three towns. Even MBTA busses in the Boston area start to really slow down after 7:00 so you are waiting 45 minutes sometimes to get to your apartment. This made visiting my dad a huge pain in the rear end when I used to live in Seattle, because he was way out in the nowhereseville suburbs and getting to him was a three and a half affair with four bus transfers, as opposed to a fifty-five minute car ride. The funniest part is that probably two thirds of that travel time was spent getting from the long-distance bus terminal to his house, because actual connectivity within the suburb itself is just so, so lovely.
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Jan 18, 2022 22:26
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:
It's not just "the free market" though when it comes to zoning. You literally cannot build anything more than a Single Family Home in most of the zoned residential land in the US. It doesn't matter if it's a private developer, a non-profit, a private financer, the government, or whatever. If that area is zoned for Single Family Homes only, then Single Family Homes are all that will get built. This is why we have a missing middle problem in the US. If socialists suddenly win control of America and say "we spend whatever money necessary to build affordable housing" in the US. Then all that gets built in most of the zoned land is........more single family homes. Only after you change that zoning are you allowed to then build something a crazy sounding as a Duplex or Rowhome. Solaris 2.0 fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Jan 18, 2022 |
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Jan 18, 2022 22:33
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:this is why im suspicious of upzoning proposals. why would we trust the free market to build affordable housing when what the free market currently builds as affordable housing are cheap cookie cutter suburbs marching out towards exurbia? ah, but better kinds of housing are illegal, surely if we legalize it the market will choose the more expensive, less popular option, for reasons In any case, this is a testable hypothesis: do growing metros that actually (some) permit dense infill get it? Being from the bay area, it looks like the answer is 'yes', even in the cases where the locals make it a pain in the rear end; presumably you'd get even more if it wasn't a pain in the rear end, where even 100% affordable housing for seniors by non-profits finds objections by local NIMBY's. Of course, it may require rule changes at a higher level than cities or counties to get that, like at the state level. I know California has passed some rules in the last several years pushing for more density -- it hasn't been nearly what's required, and some of the laws are crippled in dumb ways, but it's still been movement in the right direction at least. Now, more public housing is definitely needed too, but in that case you'd still need upzoning and easier development rules for infill.
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Jan 18, 2022 22:43
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:its a tax-wonky hypothesis for sure but im suspicious of just-so stories like this. it reads more like the journalist saying "check out this weird thing i just learned about called real estate depreciation!" and turned it into an article Nobody was arguing malls wouldn't exist without tax shenanigans. They certainly exist outside the United States, particularly in other car-loving countries such as Cold America and Dangerous America. Just not to such an extent, under less construction-friendly taxation schemes.  It's kind of a commercial equivalent of how Japanese homes depreciate like cars, only the difference is the old weird homes get knocked down and replaced with new wacky houses.
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Jan 18, 2022 22:55
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Solaris 2.0 posted:It's not just "the free market" though when it comes to zoning. You literally cannot build anything more than a Single Family Home in most of the zoned residential land in the US. It doesn't matter if it's a private developer, a non-profit, a private financer, the government, or whatever. If that area is zoned for Single Family Homes only, then Single Family Homes are all that will get built. This is why we have a missing middle problem in the US. it's not realistic to expect predominantly suburban areas full of detached homes to meaningfully densify on any useful timeframe, the demolition and lot assembly costs are too high. generally what one sees in blanket upzoning is a lack of response in the market or a continuation of what they were building anyway, luxury condos and townhouses exclusionary zoning is bad for a lot of reasons but lack of missing middle housing is not one of them - anything from duplexes to low rise apartments is perfectly compatible with automotive suburbia. name a suburb and i'll find some missing middle housing in it Cicero posted:Framing it as the 'free market' choosing sprawl is silly when you consider how things actually work and the rules at play. In most cases, building dense infill in the city is either illegal or much harder by virtue of rules that allow nosy neighbors to throw up roadblocks. Obviously developers want to make as much money as easily as possible, so if you want dense infill then make dense infill the easy thing and sprawl the hard thing that requires justification. The market can absolutely create dense infill, just look at basically any non-anglo country.  dense infill is happening all over my city so i can only say that when it comes to handwavey generalizations and anecdotal observations, mine contradict yoursit's also not automatically a bad thing for nosy neighbors to throw up roadblocks? this is one of the tools by which residents fight gentrification. i don't get this argument that we can somehow socialistically cut regulations and enable the free market to work its unfettered will for the benefit of the people, in a socialist way. this feels to me more like a desperation move and a misunderstanding of the tools currently available to construct affordable housing
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Jan 18, 2022 22:56
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:it's not realistic to expect predominantly suburban areas full of detached homes to meaningfully densify on any useful timeframe, the demolition and lot assembly costs are too high. generally what one sees in blanket upzoning is a lack of response in the market or a continuation of what they were building anyway, luxury condos and townhouses You literally cannot build anything more than a single family home on most residential zoned land. Yea no kidding you can find me a single random apartment that was probably built before the zoning went into affect. Also yes, neighbors throwing up roadblocks to affordable housing is bad because it prevents housing from being built where it needs to be built. *snipe edit* We're not talking luxury apartments in a majority-minority neighborhood here, we're talking wealthy home-owners explicitly preventing affordable housing from being built to keep the poors out. quote:
And no, stop this. You can build neighborhoods with a mix of homes and it gives people more options. My neighborhood for example has a mix of section 8 housing, garden apartments, townhomes (I live in one) and single family homes all ringed by parks, and is connected by bus stops, and a retail center. It is an active, lively neighborhood that is far more affordable than others around it that are only SFH, and as a result, is actually also majority-minority. quote:
Also this is incredibly false and wrong. Affordable housing is being blocked in many, many places in this country. I don't feel like doing homework for you, but you can use the power of Google to see why you are wrong. Solaris 2.0 fucked around with this message at 23:15 on Jan 18, 2022 |
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Jan 18, 2022 23:05
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Solaris 2.0 posted:You literally cannot build anything more than a single family home on most residential zoned land.  in a very pedantic sense, conditional uses existbut so what? are you just demanding that single family housing be banned or something? a lot of this exclusionary zoning exists because it is low effort, but once the area is developed its not like changing the zoning is going to tear existing structures down and rebuilt them simcityishly. overlay zoning exists, variances exist, zoning designations change all the time. there's a certain assumption that if we simply got rid of the law which caused the problem, the problem will also go away, and i just dont think that follows through. if you want to significantly densify a residential suburb full of detached homes, you're going to have to put down some physical infrastructure to stimulate that market development, and even then you're just going to end up with bigger detached homes, maybe some growth in ADUs or pockets of townhouses, etc Solaris 2.0 posted:We're not talking luxury apartments in a majority-minority neighborhood here, we're talking wealthy home-owners explicitly preventing affordable housing from being built to keep the poors out. there are very few places where anyone's trying to build affordable housing near wealthy home owners anyway. like this is a very "only in southern california" argument. if you have a specific example in mind please share it because otherwise i think we're going to talk past each other with different sets of assumptions about the cities in our minds. you may not be talking about luxury apartments in a majority-minority neighborhood, i certainly am and its a big problem where i live Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 23:14 on Jan 18, 2022 |
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Jan 18, 2022 23:11
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:it's not realistic to expect predominantly suburban areas full of detached homes to meaningfully densify on any useful timeframe, the demolition and lot assembly costs are too high. generally what one sees in blanket upzoning is a lack of response in the market or a continuation of what they were building anyway, luxury condos and townhouses quote:exclusionary zoning is bad for a lot of reasons but lack of missing middle housing is not one of them - anything from duplexes to low rise apartments is perfectly compatible with automotive suburbia. name a suburb and i'll find some missing middle housing in it quote:
quote:it's also not automatically a bad thing for nosy neighbors to throw up roadblocks? this is one of the tools by which residents fight gentrification. i don't get this argument that we can somehow socialistically cut regulations and enable the free market to work its unfettered will for the benefit of the people, in a socialist way. this feels to me more like a desperation move and a misunderstanding of the tools currently available to construct affordable housing Personally I'm very much for public housing too, but it's a fact that you can at least makes things less bad by simply making it legal and easy to build more housing. Tokyo is a good example of this: it's not exactly cheap, but given its population size and national prominence within Japan -- it's basically like if you combined NYC and SF and LA together -- it's way cheaper than you'd expect, at somewhere of a third to half the rent prices of NYC. quote:are you just demanding that single family housing be banned or something?
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Jan 18, 2022 23:14
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Check out the video from the blog posted earlier: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XgucvsVEigA There are hardly any cars there of course, and yet the main road is huuuge. Like way wider than what you'd see elsewhere. Private horse carriage ownership ruined everything  Also I think if you talk to people outside of the urbanist bubble, most will be happy with the current suburban situation, so of course changing that would be next to impossible due to their objections.
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Jan 18, 2022 23:15
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:there are very few places where anyone's trying to build affordable housing near wealthy home owners anyway. like this is a very "only in southern california" argument. if you have a specific example in mind please share it because otherwise i think we're going to talk past each other with different sets of assumptions about the cities in our minds. you may not be talking about luxury apartments in a majority-minority neighborhood, i certainly am and its a big problem where i live
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Jan 18, 2022 23:17
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Cicero posted:"Luxury" is just a marketing term, it doesn't mean anything substantial. And yeah new buildings are more expensive than used ones, just like almost any other product, this isn't surprising. You can still get more reasonable housing prices with enough housing. the united states has NEVER provided adequate housing for the poor through free market provision alone. there's a lot of problems with assuming that the housing market works on a simple supply and demand model. housing is hedonic, housing is subject to induced and latent demand, you can easily drive the price of housing UP by building more of it. in order to meaningfully reduce housing prices from a supply side standpoint you'd have to build far more housing than the free market has ever built on a yearly basis, has ever been capable of building, more than is possible to be built through stimulating development by tampering with regulations exclusionary zoning needs to be killed on its own merit, not on the basis that firm deregulation is the proper way to go about inducing trickle-down housing Solaris 2.0 posted:And no, stop this. You can build neighborhoods with a mix of homes and it gives people more options. My neighborhood for example has a mix of section 8 housing, garden apartments, townhomes (I live in one) and single family homes all ringed by parks, and is connected by bus stops, and a retail center. It is an active, lively neighborhood that is far more affordable than others around it that are only SFH, and as a result, is actually also majority-minority. i kinda think that the neighborhood you're describing is mostly zoned for detached single family housing and that the reality of how these neighborhoods shake out doesn't line up with the worse one you're thinking of, wherever it is Solaris 2.0 posted:Also this is incredibly false and wrong. Affordable housing is being blocked in many, many places in this country. I don't feel like doing homework for you, but you can use the power of Google to see why you are wrong. suit yourself, i only asked you to substantiate your argument but if you don't want to, no harm no foul. i know that NIMBYs exist and block housing, i'd just prefer we have a more interesting conversation than yelling about stereotypes that aren't participating in this conversationMr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Jan 18, 2022 |
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Jan 18, 2022 23:18
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:the united states has NEVER provided adequate housing for the poor through free market provision alone. there's a lot of problems with assuming that the housing market works on a simple supply and demand model. housing is hedonic, housing is subject to induced and latent demand, you can easily drive the price of housing UP by building more of it. in order to meaningfully reduce housing prices from a supply side standpoint you'd have to build far more housing than the free market has ever built, has ever been capable of building, more than is possible to be built through free market means alone First off, it's inaccurate. While a particular new development will probably be more expensive than what it replaced -- because the new building is new, rather than old -- the effect on the metro as a whole, and even the neighborhood can be seen, and is well known at this point: https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/research/market-rate-development-impacts/ quote:Researchers have long known that building new market-rate housing helps quote:To be clear, this debate is not about whether new housing can reduce housing prices overall. At Third, we weren't talking about housing just for the poor; the working and middle classes also struggle to afford housing in many areas, especially areas with the best local economies, and the market could handle making affordable housing for those groups (though to be sure, it depends somewhat on the specific metro area). And in any case, making things less bad with more density is still a win, one that actually helps public housing in multiple different ways; for example, the more people are used to density in general, the less likely they're going to object to dense public housing. quote:exclusionary zoning needs to be killed on its own merit, not on the basis that firm deregulation is the proper way to go about inducing trickle-down housing edit: Like, I think we're in agreement that for the truly poor, you need public housing, and lots of it. But having larger supplies of housing from the market is still useful, for other groups and other reasons. I don't really see a reason not to simply do both, and in any case I'm not sure that's even possible, because public housing would need a bunch of upzones anyway. Cicero fucked around with this message at 23:44 on Jan 18, 2022 |
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Jan 18, 2022 23:36
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:
The zoning in my neighborhood is a special exemption and even so, the zoning has since been tighten to prevent additional housing from being built. Almost Every other area is zoned exclusively SHF. It’s why all the apartments/ townhomes are all 30+ year old but we’re still building McMansions in tear down lots.
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Jan 18, 2022 23:43
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Cicero posted:First off, it's inaccurate. While a particular new development will probably be more expensive than what it replaced -- because the new building is new, rather than old -- the effect on the metro as a whole, and even the neighborhood can be seen, and is well known at this point: https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/research/market-rate-development-impacts/ this is definitely not a settled question http://econ.geo.uu.nl/peeg/peeg1914.pdf Cicero posted:Secondly, I've repeatedly stated that I'm also for more public housing, and pointed out that public housing itself would also need upzoning and streamlined rules anyway, because it would encounter the same problems that new private developments do, except moreso. do you think that upzoning just means changing zoning designations? Cicero posted:To defend this kind of zoning is to declare yourself an avowed and unapologetic classist. i literally said "exclusionary zoning should be killed" so i dunno who this comment is supposed to address, but it isn't me my main criticism of upzoning advocacy is that upzoning is low hanging fruit. it is easy to advocate for, but it is likely to be ineffective. i could hit my hand with a hammer to lower rents but i won't do this because it is ineffective, even though its within my power to do and i'd be actively doing something about housing costs (beating my fingers with a hammer) Solaris 2.0 posted:Almost Every other area is zoned exclusively SHF. It’s why all the apartments/ townhomes are all 30+ year old but we’re still building McMansions in tear down lots. it is way more profitable to build a mcmansion than anything else. like yeah, we can say this is what the law permits, but if the law didn't permit the most profitable development, how quickly do you think the law would change?
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Jan 19, 2022 00:05
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:it's also not automatically a bad thing for nosy neighbors to throw up roadblocks? this is one of the tools by which residents fight gentrification. i don't get this argument that we can somehow socialistically cut regulations and enable the free market to work its unfettered will for the benefit of the people, in a socialist way. this feels to me more like a desperation move and a misunderstanding of the tools currently available to construct affordable housing Nobody here's talking about an urgent need to upzone the 'burbs and the 'xurbs, so much as the urban centers where still the majority of residential land is locked into exclusionary, SFH-only zoning. Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:my main criticism of upzoning advocacy is that upzoning is low hanging fruit. it is easy to advocate for, but it is likely to be ineffective. i could hit my hand with a hammer to lower rents but i won't do this because it is ineffective, even though its within my power to do and i'd be actively doing something about housing costs (beating my fingers with a hammer) mobby_6kl posted:Also I think if you talk to people outside of the urbanist bubble, most will be happy with the current suburban situation, so of course changing that would be next to impossible due to their objections.
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Jan 19, 2022 00:09
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Cugel the Clever posted:Except the handful of neighbors that typically turn up to veto any project frequently aren't fighting gentrification and are rarely representative of the community at large. The typical profile is well-off, white, retired Boomer house owners who will in one meeting decry a market-rate building for being unaffordable and in the next categorically reject a 100% affordable building, complaining "this isn't the kind of neighborhood for those people". Our political system also fails to give voice to hypothetical residents: those who would make a neighborhood their home if only it were affordable. Instead, the artificial constraints on number of homes filters out newcomers by price point, producing exactly the gentrification you claim you're arguing against. This is an excellent post. To back it up, here is a video from a prominent urbanist channel that shows why Suburbs are not sustainable economically. https://youtu.be/VVUeqxXwCA0 https://youtu.be/XfQUOHlAocY Solaris 2.0 fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Jan 19, 2022 |
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Jan 19, 2022 00:34
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When implemented fully, dense mixed zoning tends to be so well-liked that everybody and their dog trying to move there drives up the prices, leading to some to mistake it for a gentrifying design that should be opposed, when in fact they're just rare and desirable.
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Jan 19, 2022 00:43
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Feel like we’ve had literally this exact same argument before in this very thread between the same people
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Jan 19, 2022 00:48
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:this is definitely not a settled question http://econ.geo.uu.nl/peeg/peeg1914.pdf quote:Building on these data, we now argue that policies such as blanket upzoning, which will principally unleash market forces that serve high income earners, are therefore likely to reinforce the effects of income inequality rather than tempering them, as we now argue. quote:Thus, upzoning at a regional scale would trigger new housing construction in the neighbourhoods where the skilled workers want to live: the already-gentrifying areas and the extensive boundary zones between them and other neighbourhoods. This would allow more skilled workers in the upper quarter of the income distribution to live in the metropolitan core. Bottom line, the studies that I use actually study particular metros that made a certain amount of housing, and did their best to measure the impact of that. This paper doesn't do that. And beyond that, it has some incredibly dumb points, like quote:Indeed, according to Zillow data quote:do you think that upzoning just means changing zoning designations? quote:i literally said "exclusionary zoning should be killed" so i dunno who this comment is supposed to address, but it isn't me * There's still the issue of housing deregulation being correlated with more conservative metros and the effect that has on where companies choose to open or expand offices though. As someone who's worked in the tech industry, young techies that these companies want to recruit generally don't want to live in more conservative metros or states, for reasons you can probably guess at. So while they may complain about the high housing prices in SF or NYC, most would still prefer it to living in Tulsa or Dallas. Badger of Basra posted:Feel like we’ve had literally this exact same argument before in this very thread between the same people
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Jan 19, 2022 01:09
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Cicero posted:When people are talking about upzoning, changing zoning designations to allow for more density is the primary thing they're talking about, yes: taller buildings, smaller setbacks, reduced car parking minimums, etc. Of course there are usually other rule and design changes they're also for as well. this at least is better than "building public housing requires upzoning" which was personally confusing to me Cicero posted:"More housing doesn't lower housing prices" is the climate denialism of the left. let's deregulate so private industry can fix things isn't really a left position imo Cugel the Clever posted:Except the handful of neighbors that typically turn up to veto any project frequently aren't fighting gentrification and are rarely representative of the community at large. The typical profile is well-off, white, retired Boomer house owners who will in one meeting decry a market-rate building for being unaffordable and in the next categorically reject a 100% affordable building, complaining "this isn't the kind of neighborhood for those people". Our political system also fails to give voice to hypothetical residents: those who would make a neighborhood their home if only it were affordable. Instead, the artificial constraints on number of homes filters out newcomers by price point, producing exactly the gentrification you claim you're arguing against. i urge you to sincerely re-examine your perspective here critically, and ask some hard questions about what it is you really value https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-housing-bill-failure-equity-groups-20180502-story.html Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Jan 19, 2022 |
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Jan 19, 2022 01:19
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:this at least is better than "building public housing requires upzoning" which was personally confusing to me 1. High-demand areas typically have effectively no remaining opportunities for greenfield development 2. Replacing low-density housing with high-density to better accommodate humans looking for homes is effectively prohibited in broad swathes of our cities by zoning regulation and poor public policy processes Therefore, public housing at the scale necessary and in the most desired locations is completely dependent on either broad upzoning or blanket exemptions. The only other alternatives are land reclamation (not an option in most cases, would encounter extreme pushback, completely unnecessary expense), rezoning of non-residential land (and cleaning up any pollutants industry may have left behind), or forcing people further and further into the sprawl. How could public housing succeed if not allowed to build thousands of homes where most needed? Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:i urge you to sincerely re-examine your perspective here critically, and ask some hard questions about what it is you really value Cugel the Clever fucked around with this message at 01:43 on Jan 19, 2022 |
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Jan 19, 2022 01:39
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Cugel the Clever posted:Therefore, public housing at the scale necessary and in the most desired locations is completely dependent on either broad upzoning or blanket exemptions. no? if we generally describe upzoning as "increasing permitted densities and reducing lot restrictive features to support higher floor area ratios" or something which would stimulate the free market to build more densely, then i think we've weakened the definition to the point of uselessness if it also means allowing for a change in density on publicly owned land. local governments can kind of do what they want with public land, adhering to zoning codes is more a sign that the local government is willing to play by the rules. but if an area is zoned residential and the local school district really needs to put a bus depot there then buddy, there's gonna be a bus depot there Cugel the Clever posted:Your link appears to be a case of rich NIMBYs maliciously abusing genuine fears from the disadvantaged to completely gently caress them over in the long run. i think you reflexively view opposition to your views as orchestrated by Oppressors because this is easier than considering you might be on the side of the Oppressors yourself. i mean, you're not leaving any space at all for the disadvantaged to actually speak, you know? oh, well they're just puppets of The Man. jeez! Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 01:51 on Jan 19, 2022 |
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Jan 19, 2022 01:48
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Bongo Bill posted:When implemented fully, dense mixed zoning tends to be so well-liked that everybody and their dog trying to move there drives up the prices, leading to some to mistake it for a gentrifying design that should be opposed, when in fact they're just rare and desirable. quote:i urge you to sincerely re-examine your perspective here critically, and ask some hard questions about what it is you really value quote:Research from the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office and UC Berkeley has found that building any new housing, especially homes subsidized for low-income residents, prevents displacement at a regional level. But the data are less clear on the effects of construction in individual neighborhoods, sparking concerns that relaxed zoning rules could cause development that would price out residents in poor communities. And while it's reasonable to have concerns about displacement of local low-income residents living in whatever buildings would be torn down: quote:Wiener and Hanlon disagree and point to numerous changes made to the bill after feedback from equity organizations. SB 827 would have deferred to local rules, including those in Los Angeles, that force developers to include homes for low-income residents while adding similar standards in areas that didn’t already have them. Developers wouldn’t have been allowed to demolish rent-controlled housing without explicit local government approval. Even then, those developers would have had to offer new units in their buildings to existing tenants at their prior rents.
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Jan 19, 2022 01:49
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Badger of Basra posted:Feel like we’ve had literally this exact same argument before in this very thread between the same people I posted some sort of picture evidence why I think I like living in certain spots (as a human person). This was met with with a wall of text explaining historical causation anyone with a brain understands, and the assertion that it really ain't nobody's fault. My point was about how living in cities feels. I have no idea who is to blame nor how to fix it, but when I look at the pictures I can immediately see why. It's a physical difference, both in terms of public spaces and (related to that) the space allocated to cars. Many US cities feel like they are built to move as quickly as possible from your house to a point of private, commercial consumption. I think back at the Midwestern town I used to live in, and it is striking that they had no spaces, nor anything I'd call an "inner city" in the European sense at all. They had a main street, which was special because it had actual sidewalks, and a mini park for a statue. Otherwise, it was roads and roads and roads. Someone, whoever, is still building like this, or otherwise making no attempts to correct it. And we just learned from the article that it is very expensive, too. Okay no one is to blame, but someone continues to do that. By contrast, I know a small town where they recently redirected a river in the city and then build a park, a riverwalk and a public space as an expansion to the inner city. Someone did that, too. I think it should be done more like that I guess.
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Jan 19, 2022 02:24
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Oh there's definitely people to blame, it's just not, like, one single agency or individual. There's a litany of errors that cause this problem. A random one: "level of service" just measuring how free flowing car traffic is/how many cars a road can handle. No factoring in how many people are in those cars (or buses), just the number of vehicles. No factoring how far those cars have to go. No factoring in how the street works for people walking or biking. When that's a primary metric, it's easy to see how we'd end up with what we have (not that it's the only thing, of course).
Cicero fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Jan 19, 2022 |
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Jan 19, 2022 02:29
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local governments building public housing while ignoring zoning sounds even less likely than doing large scale upzoning
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Jan 19, 2022 03:32
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Cugel the Clever posted:Our political system also fails to give voice to hypothetical residents: those who would make a neighborhood their home if only it were affordable. I've read an interesting argument that this essentially boils down to scale. The more local the decision-making, the more it empowers NIMBYs relative to potential residents.
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Jan 19, 2022 10:06
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Mooseontheloose posted:I live in a medium sized (over 20,000 people) town in Massachusetts and the constant complaints about building APARTMENT buildings in OUR SMALL TOWN constantly grate on me. The usual people have identical complaints in Cambridge (pop. 116,000).
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Jan 19, 2022 16:28
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Cambridge is one of the denser cities in the United States. None of the mid-sized MA suburbs come close.
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Jan 19, 2022 16:45
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Bubbacub posted:The usual people have identical complaints in Cambridge (pop. 116,000). Oh yah, I did a race in Cambridge and the constant debates about the overlay.
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Jan 19, 2022 16:47
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Insanite posted:Cambridge is one of the denser cities in the United States. None of the mid-sized MA suburbs come close. Yes but it still has neighborhood character and architectural diversity that we mustn't spoil by letting outside investors profit from out-of-control development.
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Jan 19, 2022 17:39
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Jasper Tin Neck posted:I've read an interesting argument that this essentially boils down to scale. The more local the decision-making, the more it empowers NIMBYs relative to potential residents. I could see it going either way; on a local scale proponents can reach more residents in person, but on a national level the discourse is mostly controlled by capital.
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Jan 19, 2022 17:43
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On a local level it’s mostly controlled by capital too it’s just capital in the form of land and homeowners
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Jan 19, 2022 17:47
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Are there any small towns in the US people can point to as exemplars for how to handle densifying and equitable housing?
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Jan 19, 2022 17:50
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Nitrousoxide posted:Are there any small towns in the US people can point to as exemplars for how to handle densifying and equitable housing? Not of the top of my head. I wills say SOME towns in Mass. have done a decent job in building their housing stock but that's because they wanted to avoid developers slapping them with the 40B law to build affordable housing. The short version is that MA allows you to count whole apartment buildings as affordable if 25% of the stock in the apartment is set at 40B levels. And while that maybe a loophole, the towns would of never build apartment style housing with out the law looming.
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Jan 19, 2022 18:46
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PerniciousKnid posted:I could see it going either way; on a local scale proponents can reach more residents in person, but on a national level the discourse is mostly controlled by capital. I admire your faith in community spirit and the power of reason, but say you're an elected official responsible for this issue. The more local the land use regulation is:
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Jan 19, 2022 19:05
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Jasper Tin Neck posted:I admire your faith in community spirit and the power of reason, Maybe more accurate to say I have even less faith in any other level of government.
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Jan 19, 2022 19:27
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NIMBY, anti-density attitudes are way stronger at the local level than otherwise. That's why the significant movement in California for increasing density recently has mostly been at the state level making broad decisions; you're never gonna get most people in smaller cities and towns especially to approve of even moderate levels of density, Americans are just loving terrified of that poo poo. And they can always just act like that's someone else's problem. "Yes, we need more housing, but why here? Can't it be in {major cities that are already dense, suburbs that aren't doing their part, Texas}?" If you just let cities decide, maybe you could make some inroads in cities like SF or Cambridge or other places where people are at least somewhat reasonable. But, like, Atherton or Los Altos? They'll be richie rich suburbs keeping out the working and middle class forever. They'll never suddenly decide that apartments or even fourplexes throughout their city is okay.
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Jan 19, 2022 19:44
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https://twitter.com/OhSweetNothing/status/1483982815599468554?s=20 thank god we have community input processes to stop gentrification
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Jan 20, 2022 05:39
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