Residential-only zoning is "the bad kind of zoning". It wasn't invented to keep factories away from homes; it was /literally/ invented in Berkeley to stop Chinese immigrants from being able to afford homes by running laundry businesses out of them.
Right - but that part of residential zoning still stays, right?
It's just that you can build a duplex on a "single-family residential lot".
But you still can't teach piano lessons out of your house without one of your neighbors constantly calling the city and complaining about how you're causing traffic problems, right?
And you definitely can't wash other people's clothes or dishes in your house, right??
"Residential-only zoning is "the bad kind of zoning"."
I wish I could mind-meld with you and transmit the memories and experiences of growing up in a residential area with no zoning.
You know that sci-fi trope where the empath gets the memory dump and breaks away screaming and crying because they can't handle the trauma that comes through ?
It would be like that.
You think you'll get cute shops and pop-ups and delightful mixed-use and stimulating workshop spaces and crafty folks doing things artisanally.
What you will actually get is half-built cars. Everywhere. You will get mobile homes and immobile RVs. You will get horses. Not rich-people horses, but "Grandma died and she had a horse and nobody knew what to do with it so we fenced part of the front yard" horses. Someone will disconnect from city sewer because they "know how to build septic". Someone will get llamas.
You think I'm making this up and I promise you I am not.
You've lived so long in a nicely regulated, rules-based order that you have no idea the kind of bullshit people engage in the minute the rules go away.
> What you will actually get is half-built cars. Everywhere. You will get mobile homes and immobile RVs. You will get horses. Not rich-people horses, but "Grandma died and she had a horse and nobody knew what to do with it so we fenced part of the front yard" horses. Someone will disconnect from city sewer because they "know how to build septic". Someone will get llamas.
a) It sounds like what you're saying is "you'll get poor people". There are several things wrong with that, the first one being the rampant classism inherent in it.
b) So you'll get horses, and mobile homes. So what? Oooh, are you afraid your property values will drop? Deal with it. That's a small price to pay to enable the kinds of walkable neighborhoods mixed zoning allows, and the kind of rejuvenated communities it creates.
c) Allowing residential and commercial zones to mix has nothing to do with people trying to build their own septic systems.
All in all, it sounds to me like you experienced what happens when you live in a lower-income area, that happens not to have strong zoning laws, and your takeaway from that experience is that the lack of zoning caused the lower-income parts. Correlation is not causation, and not letting rich people stuff poor people away in a corner and forget about them is absolutely part of what we need to do.
> a) It sounds like what you're saying is "you'll get poor people".
It's more like trashy (rural coded?) middle class people I think. Collectors of broken cars and llamas aren't that poor! Similarly, you see pictures of people in, say, West Virginia with tons of stuff in their yard and kinda messy houses, but they're homeowners in a rich first world country and I suspect they're often pretty well off for the area. It's more of a personality thing.
The confusing part for me was that there are mobile homes and RVs everywhere in Silicon Valley because there aren't enough homes due to the super strict zoning.
None of the things you've listed—except possibly the ones trying to self-install a septic system when they already have municipal sewer access—sound like "bad behavior." (And, again, that has nothing to do with zoning.)
What it sounds like is the stereotypical upper-middle-class white suburban boogeyman of "Those People" that you don't want around, because they bring down property values, with a healthy helping of implied racism and explicit classism.
Furthermore, there's no reason why zoning laws couldn't be selectively adjusted and relaxed—for instance, to ensure no heavy industry goes in right in the middle of a residential area, where it's more likely to be disruptive to sleep and potentially polluting.
Acting like relaxing zoning laws to allow for corner stores and similar things will bring us to a Mad Max-style wasteland is exactly the kind of rampant NIMBYism that got us into this mess in the first place.
"What it sounds like is the stereotypical upper-middle-class white suburban boogeyman of "Those People" that you don't want around, because they bring down property values, with a healthy helping of implied racism and explicit classism."
I don't know what it "sounds like" and I cannot speak to your stereotypes.
I no longer have any interaction with residential property, zoning, development, or any of these housing politics. I am not affected by "property values".
I look at these issues as an interested, outside observer and I have tremendous enthusiasm for urban spaces, walkable cities, mixed use environs, etc.
But at the same time I appreciate well regulated[1] single family neighborhoods/developments and while I don't live anywhere like that I appreciate the reasons that someone might have for preferring that.
I hope that it is useful and interesting to you to learn that there are a variety of practical and aesthetic reasons for (not agreeing with you) that come from ideas and experience that (aren't the stereotypes you have in mind).
[1] This is the correct term. Arguing for abolishment of residential zoning is arguing for deregulation.
Everyone says that until their neighbor’s hobby includes heavy machinery at 6am. Then they say “well no that’s this other non-zoning, non-HOA type of law we really do need”.
But really, people want to do what they want, and other folks don’t get to. That’s the whole of it.
I've been to Japan (+ several other countries that aren't the US). It's pretty nice there.
As to whether or not zoning laws are what prevent people from owning horses, that's not clear to me. But a law saying you can't build a bookstore or apartment on the lot doesn't seem very related.
"As to whether or not zoning laws are what prevent people from owning horses, that's not clear to me. But a law saying you can't build a bookstore or apartment ..."
Everyone thinks they want to "get rid of zoning" but, of course, there are "obvious" rules we would all need to follow and "of course you can't do that" ... and it quickly becomes murky as to where "zoning" begins and ends and which regulations are "legitimate" or not.
Either people can communally decide what rules they want to enact or they can't.
If they can, restricting multi-family housing is as legitimate as anything else in a democracy. Like allowing or disallowing horses. Or limits to vehicles-on-blocks-in-the-front-yard. Or ad-hoc septic systems.
Out of Tokyo and San Francisco, which one requires all new buildings to go to subjective design reviews where your neighbors complain about shadows and tell you they don't like the color you plan to paint it and the style of windows facing the road?
Hint: it's not Tokyo, which actually does have a fair number of old ugly poorly-maintained buildings scattered around random nice neighborhoods. Which is fine and not hurting anyone.
Tokyo actually does have rules about shadows: new building plans have to show how the new building will affect the sunlight of neighboring buildings. I think there's some limitations along these lines, but not a lot. But yeah, you can make your building as ugly as you want.
Anyway, those older, ugly, poorly-maintained buildings eventually get torn down and replaced with something better, because the land value is very high. It's much more laissez-faire than the US and property rights are much, much stronger (the idea that you should mostly be able to do what you want with your property).
I was recently looking to buy a house, and the agent said this is the reason for the weird shapes of housing. You can't build a building in such a way that reduces the light into bedrooms. There's a certain amount of light available for a room that allows it to be classified as a bedroom or not. Hence why you'll see places listed as a 3LDK with a "storage room", rather than a 4LDK in some cases.
I'm not talking about building houses in absence of personal contact, I'm talking about keeping horses, llamas and half-built cars in a residential area.
What's the difference that isn't a posthoc fallacy?
Cause suburban Americans are famous busybodies. There's no way you can outdo them. They think anyone walking past their house is casing it for a robbery and will call the police and post on Nextdoor about it.
You don't seem to understand what I'm talking about. Imagine a HOA that has a say as what you wear, what you cook and what colour your curtains are, except it doesn't exist except in your mind through how you were brought up. A mere thought of your neighbor greeting you in a slightly abnormal manner because you are wearing bright green sneakers is enough for you not to buy them.
You can't buy a car unless you have proof you have a parking spot, so the cars part is out. Same deal with RVs. No street parking, no RV.
There's no space for people to have a horse.
There's plenty of places that I think everyone would call a "shack" made from old tin that's probably been around since the 50s or so, and is not really any different from a mobile home. So that exists here and people are generally OK with it.
People wouldn't disconnect from the sewer to do septic. That isn't a zoning issue, it's a public health one, and it's obviously illegal.
Honestly, none of the hypotheticals described have to do with zoning. Social pressure to do the right thing is a thing here, but not the only reason that things aren't super chaotic.
I think it's reasonable to invoke Chesterton's Fence here. We have to fully understand the potential consequences before enacting something potentially rife with unintended consequences before dismantling a system.
We've lived with Zoning over a century and we ought to have an understanding of what unwanted changes could come about if that were suddenly lifted. It's not that we _should not_ do it but we should make changes in a measured, purposeful and understood manner so we don't end up like unregulated favelas (not in the sense of being mostly poor, but in the sense that anything goes.)
Correct me if I'm misrepresenting you here, but are you claiming that the reason that something is invented is always the reason why it continues to be used?
Now it's probably because people don't like "traffic" outside their homes, but basically yes, that's why single-family zoning is still in place. It's extremely silly to want to ban eg corner stores in your neighborhood.
In SF where people have discovered "left-NIMBYism", people will now argue that keeping it is fighting racism, but then if you go into the suburbs they'll still happily argue the original position.
Luckily we don't have to argue about abstractions since we can just go look at land use.
I do think a lot of people want to keep single family zoning because they think it makes their properties more valuable but 1. historical segregation is part of that and 2. if your home price goes up, that only makes you richer as long as you don't want to buy any other homes that've also gone up.
People want single family zoning because they enjoy it more. People wanting single family housing is what makes it valuable not the single family housing itself.
But also people want single family housing because US made apartments are complete shit. They're poorly insulated to heat and sound which means all sorts of unnecessary interaction with your immediate neighbors, making apartment living that much worse, driving the demand of single family housing up.
People want single family homes in neighborhoods of single family homes, though; the value is highly contingent on the neighborhood those homes are in.
You might be fine with a given backyard in a suburb, but not with a highrise next door that can see right into it.
Zoning handles this in the same way that it handles preferences about people not wanting to live next to industrial shops or giant supercenters. It does this by restricting what can be developed, even if someone moving away doesn't care what happens to their old lot, and could make more money on the sale otherwise.
Whether we should respect those preferences is a fine question, but zoning is pretty much the only tool to enforce these kinds of commons-oriented preferences.
Yup. The anti sprawl people should understand that "densifying" and "building up" in neighborhoods of single family homes will just create a demand for new neighborhoods further out that don't have to deal with these issues. I currently live 25ish miles from a major city downtown. I've noticed a lot of interest from developers in building 3-4 story apartment buildings around here even though there doesn't seem to be much demand for that type of living situation. I will gladly move 15 miles further out, I work from home, in 10 years if this area becomes too dense with apartments.
That's fine, that's the whole point of relaxing zoning restrictions. Nobody is trying to ban single-family housing developments. The point is, the majority of the US now forces you into a single-family housing development even when you have a different preference.
In Japan, as discussed upthread, you often have single family homes next to 3 story apartment buildings close to the city and the further you go out, the more they become single family homes. There's space for all preferences.
Nobody wants to densify the outskirts of Kankakee. They want to densify SF and LA.
Feels a bit like the oddly pervasive "Our city is x on the top 10 list of places Russia would nuke first because of local industry y" myth that existed in places all across America.
I agree. Note how I didn't use residential only-zones, instead opting for residential zones, which can and should be mixed-use. This is not to say that there are some incompatible land uses to be considered - industrial uses can broadly be considered to be incompatible with residential uses, for example.
[5] Yelimeli, Supriya (February 24, 2021). "Berkeley denounces racist history of single-family zoning, begins 2-year process to change general plan - Council unanimously approved a resolution that will work toward banning single-family zoning". Berkeleyside.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210301140957/https://www.berke...
Accurate or not, I hate that all of these references are from one 6-month regional news cycle. They may as well be 1 citation, rather than 5. The excess just makes the inclusion of claim look more motivated by political investment than a desire to be informative.
I hate that people's instinct is to play 4D chess with the intent of some random Wiki editor instead of even glancing at the data contained in the references. Here are some aged references for your discerning palate:
This disputes the claim it originated in SF and the reasons listed. Odd that Wikipedia is centered on SF and its claim is backed up by (several experts believe.) Looks to me like another example of Wikipedia pushing a narrative and pretending it’s fact.
Looks to me like another example of HN guy pushing a narrative and pretending it’s fact. Or maybe someone just made a mistake and a more charitable reading would show that there is perhaps not a conspiracy going on but instead just a misunderstanding.
If you have an interest, the most comprehensive book I'm aware of is "Zoned in the USA: The Origins and Implications of American Land-Use Regulation" by Sonia Hirt. Cornell University Press. 2014. ISBN 978-0-8014-5305-2.
TLDR: the real estate developer that founded Claremont (Mason-McDuffie Co spearheaded by Duncan McDuffie) imposed conditions in its titles that explicitly bared non-whites and prohibited commercial enterprises. However, those title conditions couldn't control neighboring areas, so McDuffie pushed to get zoning laws passed that were explicitly inspired by anti-chinese laundry regulations in LA. The Berkley regulation was "expedited" to prevent a "negro dance hall" from opening.
To me, the existence of the anti-commercial provisions in the McDuffie title restrictions in addition to explicit racial exclusions indicates that racial exclusion was not the only motivating factor in adopting single family zoning laws. However, the context and immediate usage does make it pretty clear that racial exclusion was a significant part of the motivation.
No it’s just completely untrue. This is a common tactic today to say something was created for <racist|sexist|homophobic> purposes so the entire concept is bad naturally.
See how activists say policing was invented to catch slaves or some ridiculous claim. There’s a bunch of others.
Yes, it is absolutely ridiculous that slave patrols existed and formed the basis for later police departments in the south. It is also ridiculous that labor-busting squads existed in the north, which formed the basis for later police departments in the north.
The history is there, it is what it is, as ridiculous as that is. You might argue that modern police have far outgrown their origins, and then it would be up to readers to decide which whether your claim is also ridiculous, given how many police departments generally exhibit qualities consonant with their origins.
Ancient Rome had police. Get real. Boston has the oldest police department. And although some slave states used police for it, it’s ridiculous to compare todays policing as anything like it.
Yes, the slave society of Rome had a police force within the city, which was mostly made up of slaves under supervision. The two main functions of this police force? Fighting fires and catching runaway slaves. So the gap between "police" and "slave patrols" has been nonexistent for a very long time.
I already mentioned that northern states had union-busting squads who formed the basis of modern police forces, so yes, I'm aware of Boston, too.
Once again, you use that word. I agree that it's ridiculous to compare today's policing to anything like historic policing or ancient slave patrols. Today's police are far less accountable, more violent, and heavily armed.
I guess there's been a long weekend, keeping us both away, but since you brought up ancient Rome, I keep remembering fun things from reading about this a couple of years back, inspired by Mike Duncan's excellent podcast on the history of Rome.
Within the great city, there were, as you pointed out, police. As I pointed out, they were mostly there for fire-fighting and as a slave patrol, and were themselves made up of mostly-slaves. But you might be thinking, what about investing crimes? That's what police do when there aren't traffic stops to make, right?
In that great city, if you wanted a crime investigated, you did it yourself. Evidence gathered? Find it yourself. If you wanted to accuse someone of something, you grabbed them and at least one witness and dragged them before a judge. So justice, what there was of it, was largely available to the wealthy, who could afford to hire people to drag other people before judges, and if you were a poor person wanting to accuse a rich person of a crime, well, good luck with that.
So modern cops might have a really poor clearance rate for most crimes, barely exceeding half even for murder[0], but at least they try, which is more than can be said for Roman vigiles urbani. And at least they pretend to be impartial, even if one can clearly see that crimes are prosecuted unevenly, and that US prisons are filled with more than their fair share of the poor.
Okay, they didn't invent racist policies that persist to this day, they just furthered their racist goals by using existing policies that persist to this day. Better?
No, it's completey true. The first businesses affected by Berkeley residential zoning were Chinese and Japanese laundries (c.f. Ordninance 575-NS). Another zoning ordinance was passed to block a "negro dance hall." See Pollard's "Outline of the Law of Zoning in the United States," and Paul Ong "An Ethnic Trade: The Chinese Laundries in Early California." (Journal of Ethnic Studies, Winter 1981)
I think all the people who have washers and dryers in their own homes would disagree that having a laundromat on their street would be a value add. It would just bring traffic from outside of their neighborhood into it.
I'm not making a case for or against, but instead saying this is a matter of perspective based on who's making the judgement call.
You could say the same about restaurants, stores, or streets themselves.
Those people can choose to live in the woods away from society if that’s a problem. The vast majority of people like having things they need within a few minutes of their home—particularly people who aren’t in HOA-governed cookie cutter suburbs.
This is factually incorrect and easily verifiable so. The vast majority - 80% of the US population prefers single family homes. There are 138 Million households in the US and fully half - 68 million - reside in owner occupied single family homes, another ~15% (about 44 million people) live in rented single family homes. This is just the people who have achieved the desired outcome. There are another 15% of people who would prefer to be in one, but just haven't gotten there yet.
Very few people actually want to be stacked on top of each other and packed in like sardines around a bunch of loud shops and offices. Very few people want to walk through dirty city streets stepping over feces and around homeless people or forced to be smushed in with strangers on public transportation to grab their groceries. They want to be 5-10 minutes away from that stuff in a car which they can afford to own. The reason a lot of people are putting up with this anyway is an affordability issue only. They are forced to work in a handful of cities to be paid well and the cost of parking and the congestion in these cities make it impractical to own a car or commute.
I obviously know there is a slice of people who actually do just love the hell out of city life and wouldn't trade NYC or SF for the world, but to claim that this is the vast majority is demonstrably false.
Edit: Adding a source. There are many, but this one is nice in that it breaks it out by age in addition to overall and breaks out actual vs preferred.
That's all very nice but the calculations would change quite quickly if people had to pay for the upkeep of the roads they use for their cars. Cities for the most part use their productive core to subsidise the unproductive suburbs until they inevitably go bankrupt when the roads build 40 years ago need to be replaced.
This. The preferences are obviously driven by the widespread subsidies provided to suburban living. Take that away and those preferences will shift rapidly.
Looking at your average suburb, there are about 110 houses on quarter acre lots per mile of paved 2 lane road within said suburb, plus an additional bit to connect to an arterial street (which also connects other suburbs) and back out to main drags that have businesses and such.
Starting with the street the houses are actually on, it costs approx $300-$500K to repave 1 mile of residential 2 lane undivided road. Using the upper end we've got $500,000 / 110 houses / 20 year lifespan = $18/mo per household. A rounding error against property taxes.
Now lets assume that per mile of suburb, you also have 3 miles of connecting minor arterial roads those houses also need to account for. These run $400-$800K per mile, and again we'll take the upper limit here. So $800K * 3 / 110 / 20 = $90/mo
So our grand total is $108/mo or $1,306/year. The average American pays $2500/year in property taxes already. I don't think the extra $108/mo is going to change peoples preferences for not being packed in on top of each other. I also don't think that these folks are contributing zero to this now. The gas at the pump is taxed and earmarked for road improvement, some of their property tax goes to it as well.
We can do the same thing for power, water, et cetera. Yes over the lifetime of suburban living a single person probably needs to account for something like $250K of extra infrastructure their sprawl requires, but that's not a lot to pay over a lifetime and a lot of it is already baked into the initial cost of their house (Builders had to pave those suburbs, wire & plumb the neighborhood and that cost is baked into those initial home sales).
I very probably can't make a similar argument for truly rural homes - but a lot of those are farms and I'm sure that complicates things quite a bit - as subsidizing rural farms benefits anyone who eats food from those farms.
It's not just the direct subsidies, it's also the massive amounts of free parking in both suburbs and cities that have distorted the built environment, and things like the mortgage interest deduction + the capital gains tax exemption that have made single-family homeownership cheaper than it would otherwise be.
You’ve made a few massive leaps by assuming a single family home can’t possibly have a shop nearby, and that if it did it’d mean people are dodging feces.
Because you can literally go just about anywhere outside of America and see that people live in homes right next to businesses and… it’s fine. We’re not dodging feces and homeless people. Frankly, most places I’ve been to and lived have been much cleaner than my old US homes despite the fact I’m literally a 2 minute walk from a two separate stores and several restaurants in an area where everyone lives in detached homes.
That rant reads like fearmongering from a person with little outside exposure.
The feces and homeless comments were specifically geared towards the sort of people packing taking place in SF. I think there is some sort of rule about making assumptions about commentors, but as far as exposure, I have it in spades. First I was actually homeless in my teens, second through a combination of some time in the military, and a general wanderlust I've moved about 35 times in the 41 years I've been kicking around for including:
Seattle area (Seattle itself and most of the Puget sound - Olympia, Tacoma, Burien, Keyport, Bremerton, Poulsbo, bla bla too many to count here)
Several stents in California from San Diego to long beach and everything in between
Oregon,
Michigan,
Texas,
Georgia,
New Hampshire,
Mexico (specifically 6 months in playa del carmen),
North Carolina,
Indiana
And of course the military bits like Kuwait, Iraq and a few other gnarlies
I'm sure I'm missing some here, but the point is I've lived in many more and varied places than the average joe. The only real assumption I made here is that we were talking about the US. I will grant you if you are talking about places outside of the US it changes the math quite a bit.
Groundwater? It all goes in the same sewer, and the water you drink comes from the same tap. What does it matter if it's 5 miles away or next door, when we don't locally source water or dispose of waste locally?
Large centralized industries are probably going to be more efficient than small ones, but maybe not accounting for customer travel related pollution.
There's air pollution, of course, but few people want to ban wood stoves, and I doubt many medium industries you'd find without zoning pollute as much as 6 if those on one block.
Installation of new wood stoves is generally banned in California. Only certain types of pellet fuel stoves are allowed in new construction. And at times all wood burning is banned in certain regions for air quality reasons (except in homes that have no other source of heat).
