This is perhaps one of my favorite videos on the subject of urban planning, which opposes the idea that cities can or should be designed from the top down, citing how past attempts at this tend to lead to drive up the cost of housing and create resistance when new zoning regulations are suggested.
There seems to be a lot of opposition to this post but I thought that was pretty interesting, more of a market-perspective which is in contrast to most things you hear about zoning which tend to require lots of money and (at least where I live) never seem to work out well.
So sayeth Koch Industries. Zoning laws permit the creation of neighborhoods and regions that are not entirely dictated by the highest bidder. The cost of housing is driven up by land speculation; zoning is that thing that allows normal human beings to compete against the Koch brothers so of course they're against it.
I think the point the video tries to make is that if you regulate what kinds of housing is allowed to be made you create an artificial scarcity. So even if you say "you can only build affordable single-family homes" you inadvertently create a scarcity of housing by preventing some types of housing from being made. Now when rich people want to move in they have to buy a single family home, driving up the price. I mean aren't rich people living in concrete boxes stacked on top of one another in a skyscraper better then them living in a single family home? You might never get to live in that skyscraper but at least they take up less land and pay more in taxes, both of which seem like good things to me. I didn't know the Koch brothers partially funded the organization but it seems short-sighted to dismiss anything with funding from the Koch brothers, especially things that don't have anything to do with oil. I mean the brothers support open borders, think people should be able to freely enter the US and oppose Trump's immigration plan. Does this mean you now support Trump's immigration plan, since opposing it would put you in line with what Koch industries want? I think strong scepticism in things related to their industry is fine but zoning laws don't seem like something you spend money on unless you're just interested in what the best option for zoning is.
The Koch brothers support anything that forwards Libertarian ends, and reducing regulation for the sake of reducing regulation is a libertarian end. Because libertarianism is fundamentally a willful and deliberate disregard for externalities, saying "zoning makes housing expensive" while completely ignoring the pricing effects of eliminating zoning regulation is textbook libertarianism that precisely matches the typical Koch brothers modus operandi. What are you, twelve? You can either debate like you respect my ability to form an argument or you can smugly smirk into the silence. After all, you're the one who didn't even bother to figure out the context of the videos he's posting. I can discuss zoning at length but I'm not feeling particularly inclined to interact with someone who can toss out a false equivalency like that and act like he made a point.Does this mean you now support Trump's immigration plan, since opposing it would put you in line with what Koch industries want?
I really don't care to discuss the political views of someone who donated to the institution, if we did that with everything we'd never be able to have a discussion about anything again. Attacking someone who had almost nothing to do with the video's production is a ad hominem argument, and a bad one at that. This is a well researched video that goes through major trends in urban planning and what they think would work best to reduce the cost of housing and build better neighborhoods. I mean the basis of the video is talking about the genesis of Jane Jacobs and what she believes in, who is a major figure in urban planning and not some fringe player. If you have real criticisms of the video I'd have been interested in hearing them but if all you want to do is talk about Koch it seems like you might be more interested in a different thread
The video puts forth the libertarian distortion of city planning as if it were gospel truth, unassailed by inconvenient truths, facts that don't fit the narrative or the actual reasons anything is done. That is the Koch brothers in a nutshell. You argue that they had "almost nothing to do" with the video when it was paid for by them to put forth their agenda. This is like arguing we shouldn't discuss Ready Player One as a Spielberg production because, after all, it's not like he wrote it. He just directed it. You know why you do single-family as opposed to multi-family? Because you need build less infrastructure for it. Take a 2000-acre parcel. Zone it RR5A - that means rural, 5 acres. You now need a roads that will serve 400 households. They're dirt. You need a power feeder that will feed 400 households. It's a few lines. You need a sewer that will feed 400 households. It's septic - not even your problem. Water? It's at the main road and if they want it they can stub into it on their own dime. Let's zone it RS7200 - that's a house every 7200 square feet. There's now twelve thousand houses. It's a town now, with a power substation, a post office, a grocery store, a wastewater treatment plant, a police station, the whole nine yards. Hey, fukkit - let's let them go eight stories up. Now it's got its own Wikipedia page, it's gonna need a subway spur, and 50,000 people live there. Now. Let's take my 5 acre plot, which I bought backintheday. I'm going to pretend it's an RS7200 and put thirty houses on it. And those 30 people are going to shit into your water table, pull their water off of your meager waterworks, pull down 30x the power the grid was designed for, and generate 30x the traffic. And I'm gonna get fuckin' rich on it and my neighbors can suck it because I'm faster than them and all the stuff that comes in? That's not my problem. I pay my fuckin' taxes. But it's everyone else's problem. It's the opposite of a well-researched video. It's full of lies. It argues that zoning exists to create single-family homes, when in fact zoning exists to properly allocate public works. We have industrial zones because they have greater power requirements, heavier transport requirements, and generate more environmental pollution. We have commercial zones because they have greater traffic requirements, heavier parking requirements and generate more revenue. We have residential zones because they have greater privacy requirements, heavier environmental requirements and are the most sensitive to disturbance and disruption. This is urban planning 101 shit but the Kochs blow through it like no one has ever had these thoughts before. I've read Jane Jacobs. She was a screaming NIMBY wasp so it's fuckin' hilarious how all these privileged little hipster Tech Bros who insist on their right to pay too much for a subdivided condo have turned her into some sort of patron saint of libertarian thought. Her basic point was that external forces of development never give due consideration to the current residents being developed and that you should leave things as they are, not tear shit down to build bigger. Have you read Jane Jacobs? Because this video misrepresents every idea she held dear. It makes shit up. There's a very "real criticism" of it, which by the way, is rooted in the fact that it's Koch bullshit. And you can think that's not relevant to the discussion at hand, but your thoughts in this matter do not buttress your credibility.
Which part is false? Are you trying to claim city housing prices aren't driven by supply and demand? Are you trying to tell me that san francisco actually has very lax zoning laws, or that people don't live in cities only "public works" do? You seem to have a very poor understanding of city zoning or economics. If a building requires a large amount of a utility, for example, you're not going to build that building where there is no infrastructure for it. That's why if you look at a city like Houston, which has no zoning laws, it's still a pretty normal city (with the exception of rent, which is much much cheaper, and a quality of life which is better). People don't build oil refineries near expensive housing or parks because it doesn't make economic sense. People don't build skyscrapers of two-lane roads, they build them near large streets and highways. Pretending zoning exists because of public works is incorrect and stands in the face of cities in the US which have no zoning but have no issues with any of this. I suspect you didn't actually watch the video, so I'll explain it briefly. The premise of it is that there have been bad things in the past with our cities. Large public programs have cost a lot and failed to be good places to live. Strict zoning has limited the supply of housing. While people stopped building these major projects as frequently around the time/after jacobs wrote her book the strict zoning laws remain. The hypothesis of the video is that if you got rid of these restrictions you would get more housing, and while it might not always be great housing some of it might be more affordable, which is good for residents. I also see no reason why this isn't a valid hypothesis considering this is how all of economics everywhere else works via supply and demand. Also I'm wondering if you've read her book, she generally would have agreed with the video (although the terms yimby and nimby didn't exist when she wrote it, the major issue at the time was large public projects dictated by the city that didn't work). Her contention was that top-down planning often failed because it didn't properly take into accounts the neighborhood. She didn't like the idea of creating separate zones for each activity, pushing cars on people to travel to each zone, or tearing down entire neighborhoods because they weren't planned properly. She liked the idea of the people in the city building what they wanted and neighborhoods changing organically over time. That's why she wrote extensively against large city projects and favored private people having freedoms and doing things that made sense locally. I mean a whole section of the book (sect. 2) was dedicated to diversity, and she had a chapter on the importance of mixed use zoning to allow people options to build what they want. I don't think there's a single page in the book where she's advocating for large, top-down government projects. Also the reason Koch isn't relevant is because the video is well-cited and backs it's claims well. If the organization has a valid point why would it matter who backed it? I know I already made this point but if someone read a Howard Zinn book the correct response isn't to harass them for the rest of their life until they renounce everything he said. They guy may have been a moron but you should still keep an open mind in case they have something worthwhile to say, which they very well might. Using this fact to claim they're an evil socialist is stupid and really is just name calling/an ad hominem which doesn't help either argument
Hey man, I read as far as If you want to talk to people then this kind of thing is not the way to do it. If you want to rant and vent, have fun while it lasts. People will block you from commenting on their stuff eventually.Are you trying to tell me that san francisco actually has very lax zoning laws, or that people don't live in cities only "public works" do?
and quit reading.
If you want a good response you should say something other than nonsense. How am I supposed to talk about something with someone who doesn't think housing is tied to economics? If you deny zoning laws have had a significant effect on san francisco housing how are we supposed to talk about it? All of your arguments rely on ad hominem arguments and it's admittedly kind of frustrating to have someone acting so disingenuously over and over again
I'm not going to dig into your zoning argument. The main point I'm making is to pay attention to how self-moderating works on here. Users follow/filter/mute/block/etc other users. If someone doesn't want to hear what you say, they don't have to. The side point was something about internet arguments but I lost that train of thought.
Hey man, just an observer to this thread - I don't know much about zoning, and I don't have a dog in this fight for the most part. I don't think klein was saying that housing isn't tied to economics, and I'm hoping you can explain how you came to that conclusion. I also don't think anyone mentioned San Francisco. I'll admit that kleinbl00 can sometimes come across a bit condescending. Their comment is dismissive towards you, and I understand why you feel slighted...But you haven't been super welcoming, either. You two have been insulting each other. They were right to be frustrated by your false-equivalency earlier. Valid arguments come from all sides, but truth != validity and claims need to be evaluated in context of an organization's goals. I think it's fair to assume that the Koch brothers have biased the video. Even if you disagree, it merits discussion past the "So you disagree with EVERYTHING the Koch Bros think?" arguments you've been putting forth.All of your arguments rely on ad hominem arguments
Gonna have to disagree with you there, friend. "But have you ever wondered what a city might look like if it said, you know what, why don’t we just build whatever we want wherever the hell we want? Well, my friends, there's no need to wonder. Welcome to Houston, Texas: America’s biggest clusterfuck and home to vast pockets of organisational monstrosities such as this The lack of zoning means there are parts of Houston where homes sit next to skyscrapers next to malls next to factories. Placing buildings that should be miles apart be within a few metres of one another makes the city look terrible in more places than you would imagine. That’s the other thing about zoning laws: not only do they select areas where only certain things should go, they also keep things that shouldn’t be near each other from actually being near each other. Like, for example, single-storey homes next to skyscrapers. Car parks next to playgrounds. Or, even, primary schools next to sex shops"That's why if you look at a city like Houston, which has no zoning laws, it's still a pretty normal city (with the exception of rent, which is much much cheaper, and a quality of life which is better).
