
A Not-So-Brief Thought on Zoning (2017) - allthings
https://medium.com/migration-issues/a-not-so-brief-thought-on-zoning-9b8cb1298de3
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ThrustVectoring
The very most urban core is already dense enough with skyscrapers etc. What
zoning liberalization means is primarily two things:

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.

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timerol
> 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.

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pchristensen
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.

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projektfu
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.

