A Not-So-Brief Thought on Zoning (2017)(medium.com)
medium.com
A Not-So-Brief Thought on Zoning (2017)
https://medium.com/migration-issues/a-not-so-brief-thought-on-zoning-9b8cb1298de3
5 comments
> I still think bulldozing 3% of a city’s built environment in 5 years time seems extremely unlikely, but YMMV.
Having the average age of replacement of a building be at 150 years old would result in approximately 3% of the city being replaced every 5 years. That seems a bit long to me, but within reasonable expectations. I would expect to see more than 3% of the city replaced every 5 years.
Having the average age of replacement of a building be at 150 years old would result in approximately 3% of the city being replaced every 5 years. That seems a bit long to me, but within reasonable expectations. I would expect to see more than 3% of the city replaced every 5 years.
This is a sloppy essay - it reads like the first draft of an idea. The facts he cites are all true, but a lot of his conclusions are ... sloppy. But it feels like a stream of consciousness, a devil's advocate argument with himself, and it has a pretty good conclusion. I think most of the confusion comes from people who say "zoning" to mean "structural restrictions on growth in the housing supply", while he enumerates those structural restrictions.
Worth a read.
Worth a read.
The existence of zoning regulations before 1930 is sort of irrelevant because they didn’t specify 20 ft setbacks and 1/3 acre lot minimums. Those came with suburban planning.
1. Upzone single-family housing with aggressive setbacks from the road and neighbors with wall-to-wall three-story multiplexes.
2. Replace expensive community review processes that allow neighbors to extort concessions out of developers with by-right zoning rules.