You'll gradually get more density and less traffic this way over time, assuming that's what people want (and if it's not, they'll get what they want instead)

The root of the problem is the impulse to be disgusted by your neighbor's choices, and wishing to harness violent force (government rules) to force your neighbor to conform to your wishes. Enough already.

Everyone essentially agrees with you. The problem is that when ONE of these people wants to build the next Trump Tower on top of grandma's old cottage, the "live and let live" ethos goes out the window - everyone's at city council decrying mixed zoning or whatever else they think is "ruining" their neighborhood! There's a reason the term NIMBY exists, there's a reason we don't like living next to Sriracha factories or concert venues and don't just let people turn their houses into one of them at will.

We live in a society and the law is a reflection of it, especially in cities where a lot of people with different needs and desires have to get along. If you want to literally do whatever you want on your property, there's lots of places (in Alaska) that you can do that.

Hell, I actually agree with you, and that's why I'm eventually going to move somewhere where I don't get woke up by traffic every morning, where I don't get stuck in traffic, where I can play music as loud as I want, and celebrate Pagan holidays with massive bonfires until 7am. But until then, I won't live under any illusion of living in a libertarian paradise, because it's just not a viable outcome for city dwellers.

Enshrining a right to only live next to other residences is how we end up in this problem of boring neighborhoods that require lots of travel just to get to where you want to go.

In old large eastern US cities and in towns of any size in other countries I've been in (Mexico, Japan) there is MUCH more mixed use. You might see a motorcycle repair shop in between a couple of regular single family homes. Nobody seems to mind. I don't get why we're special and weird like this.

Most of lower Manhattan, which is so valued now, could not be built legally today. It was built before zoning codes.

I'm not against mild zoning codes that merely slow down rather than block change. For example, rather than a named maximum height, say that no building can be built more than twice the average building height in the area within a certain radius. Or, the percentage of nonresidential uses within an area cannot increase by more than 2% per year, or something.

This way in the short term, a neighborhood cannot be transformed overnight. But, it can be transformed slowly over decades towards what the market will bear, ie what people actually want and are willing to pay for.

This isn't a libertarian fantasy, it's just how towns used to work in the US before zoning and how they work in many other less backwards parts of the world...

I feel like the other commenters are missing that this is the debate. If you choose to move in next to a concert venue, that's your prerogative. If one opens next door, this is when NIMBYism kicks in. Cities need to evolve, and existing owners speaking out against loud businesses or view-blocking skyscrapers or whatever it may be prevent this from happening. Whether this is virtuous or not is up for debate, but it's certainly a limiting factor.

The massive amounts of traffic (foot\car) these things can generate, depending on the city and size of the venue. The noise from that many people on the street is not containable. The same with a new 1000 unit apartment complex going up next to you - it's going to have a massive impact on local services around you, depending on what was there already. Your idea about disallowing large changes isn't horrible.

Pretty big assumption, my friend. Generally they're not, or they're not contained well enough, or people are just old and grouchy so they go form homeowners associations and ban Sriracha factories. That said, I do agree with your overall outlook here, I'm just afraid that a lot of (particularly older, more traditional people) don't, so it's unrealistic to expect change. People don't like change, and they sure as hell don't like changing the way things change.

Assuming you never had to walk or feed it and it never misbehaved, what's so hard about having a dog for a pet?

I was thinking along similar lines, yet I suspect that this won't happen for various reasons even if NIMBYism is discounted. The layout of many suburban communities is less than ideal for commercial development, even something as innocent as a convenience store, since they are low density and unwalkable for community members while the roads are ill suited for traffic from outside of the community. Talking about gradually increasing height or unit restrictions sounds nice, yet I suspect that land and construction costs have been driven so high by existing zoning regulations that developers find smaller projects uneconomical.

  We live in a society and the law is a reflection of it, 
  especially in cities where a lot of   people with different
  needs and desires have to get along. If you want to literally
  do whatever you want on your property, there's lots of places
  (in Alaska) that you can do that.

The problem emerges here: cities are increasingly becoming centers of cultural clout, if not political or economic clout. If you don't have some kind of foothold there or some grasp of the proceedings there -- and no matter what your cultural leanings are & whether you lean left of center or right of it -- the change will drift to your shores, no matter how remotely you live or work.

Every aspect of every issue that has been covered in this thread is somehow going to affect how you live, work & socialize, in the near future. Compartmentalizing yourself -- and I'm not saying you're implying that -- from this debate with the hopes of one day moving to the far reaches of the continental expanse, is definitely not the answer.

With increasing urbanization of the world, this applies to you, even if you plan to move to a sparsely populated patch in another continent. [1]

Most people don't think through this enough. I wish I could overstate this.

Cultural clout shapes large portions of your life. And cities are increasingly holding larger and larger chunks of that clout, even if they always have.

Every law stipulating the amount of bio-degradable plastic in the cutlery at your run of the mill chain restaurant to the maximum wattage legally allowed to power your domestic vacuum cleaner [2] is somehow fashioned in the cities or influenced by people who've lived with city folk their entire lives.

This is why cities matter.

And with that, how cities are fashioned with the input & desires of a small coterie of like-minded micro-apartment-dwelling, parklet-embracing & density-demanding people, can one day have far-flung consequences on a geographically & culturally removed set of people who've never ever bought a two way ticket at a metro train station kiosk or had to share traffic with a paratransit bus [3], on their countryside roadways.

I'm not even mentioning the political pressure large companies with thousands of employees have been able to brought to bear on entire states, let alone cities, to mold & influence laws.[4]

This is why we all have to partake in this, whether we could be bothered to do so or not. Because one day we will.

[1] http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/news/population/world-...

[2] http://www.sbs.com.au/news/thefeed/article/2016/06/23/wackie...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paratransit

[4] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/salesforce-ceo-marc-benioff-nort...

edit: errors & added a footnote

But then what if the person is a travelling salesman? Has the $1m prize for this problem been solved and awarded yet? Not that I know of.

On your point about limiting how much a vacuum cleaner can use, try this simple test, pick up some dirt, put on the palm of your hand and blow it. You don't need much blow to get it off your hand. Now try the same but in reverse ie suck the dirt. Did you breath it all in? I'd say no and this is why rules restricting how powerful the vacuum cleaner can be is stupid. Its the same as using eco friendly light bulbs if working from home during the winter months. These contribute to depression & SAD, so get yourself a brighter light that's still a CFL but gives you more light (lux) for the same wattage as the old style incandescent. Technology is designed to make life better for us, not to go backwards because some politician said so.

If politicians were really bothered about the planet, your health etc, they would not spends millions on defence, they would invest massively in research whilst also spending more on education to further drive the research. The fact they don't just confirms to me, they are there for big business only.

The West's population would be in decline and has been in decline since the 70's if it wasn't for immigration. Immigration is needed because we have a messed up financial system which needs constant growth to keep driving inflation. If we didn't have inflation, very quickly you would see the financial system is just a generational Ponzi scheme as the baby boomers who stole your future have demonstrated. If you wont have to work for longer before you get your pension then the boomers have not stolen your future.

Side note, the TSP is only infeasible in theory, not in practice.

I agree that strict limits on vacuum energy use are overreaching a bit, but it has had good results. People wrongly believe that energy use = suction power.

Before the limits, vacuums were advertised on how much power they use. All manufacturers had to do was to put in an inefficient motor, and stamp "wastes even more watts" on the box.

After the limit, I now see vacuums advertised with some standardised "cleaning performance score" on carpet and hardwood, and airflow per minute. Hopefully this means that manufacturers will focus on (advertising) metrics that more closely match the actual purpose of vacuums.

Now the same result could probably have been achieved with just the advertising rules. And energy efficiency & environmental goals could be achieved with pollution tax on electricity and everyone making their own decisions on energy-efficient devices. But that's a much more complicated political move, with a lot of people opposed to it.

Before the rules, manufacturers were advertising vacuum cleaners with ever larger wattage numbers. They weren't actually any better at picking up dirt, they just had less efficient motors.

I would have preferred consumer education (e.g. require suction/CFM numbers to be shown) but banning pointless wastes of electricity in the name of marketing isn't as crazy at it may seem.

So there is a more healthier and lenient alternative to city planning which does not result in total chaos. I think many people here are stuck in between two extremes. The anarchistic what ever goes crowd that's sick and tired of the bureaucratic mess, and what we currently have. However there is I think a healthier synthesis between the two ideas that we need to really consider.

We know what the problem is, we know why there's a problem, and we even have plenty of solutions, but as has been pointed out the problem is in implementation. That's the real problem.

Here's the full post: http://urbankchoze.blogspot.ca/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html

Here in the USA, only the older parts of the old pre-zoning cities have a shot at being nice like that, and even that may have been ruined in many cities. I think we artificially have an obsession with preservation in the USA, because current zoning means that many building forms are unbuildable today so the only way to get them is to preserve something old. These nice old sorts of buildings and neighborhoods can be destroyed but not created, but that's only an artifact of zoning. With more Japanese-style zoning, preservation would be less important

You've probably misdiagnosed the root of the problem; some extended family had a shoe factory built directly next to their home and it greatly impacted their quality of life, and I don't think I'd suggest it's their fault for being unhappy about it.

"It all falls apart"? I beg to differ. It is a continuum of cities being differently developed, yes. But many cities (Bangkok, Hong Kong, Taipei) are not all that far from many European cities, and they are often far more vibrant (think Manhattan or Paris).

In fact, it is more of an uneven development, where things like subways, street food and internet might be much better, but sewage and smog is worse. It is mostly just different and depends on what you focus your attention on, seeing the bad things that are different or the good things.

I'm talking in particular about cities which have little-to-no planning (look at 1-10m population non-capital cities through China, Indonesia, India etc.)

When we were living in Guangzhou we had to deal with constant blackouts, water stopping at least once a week. Our visits to friends in Hunan and surrounding provinces were practically the same experience.

The same is true of many European cities as well, such as Paris and London. It just happened a long time ago and it is hidden under the layers of time (for example parts of Paris changed drastically 150 years ago with Hausmann). I specifically left out Singapore because, while a well-planned and pleasant city, a huge part of it doesn't strike me as having being created organically. A tell-tale sign is the lack of narrow streets in most places, instead having a lot of huge roads (with very little traffic compared to US cities, though).

It seems to me that one of the main differences is whether a city was created before or after cars were created. See this image for an illustration: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/64/Revised_petro...

If anything, you should shift the barrier a bit. Instead of saying you cannot build because X Y or Z, change it to be that you cannot rent or sell or open to the public without X Y and Z. It kills the nimbyism if the building is already there, but still keeps consumer protection in place to stop you from ending up in an apartment building built this century with exposed asbestos.

Can't speak for Bangkok though, but Taipei and Hong Kong have incredible transport systems.

If there is a specific noise/shadow or other detriment that is clearly caused to an adjoining property, then OK, the adjoining neighbor should be able to stop it (or sell the right to complain as an easement if they wish). If there isn't, and it just "looks ugly" and "isn't normal" then there is no meaningful detriment and they should be allowed to build

If you think about it, zoning and land use laws are just the codifying of things that are detriments to your neighbors. Obviously, no one is going to agree with all of them, but they are what society has deemed worthy of forbidding.

Only if by 'society' you mean rich old rentseeking stay-at-home busybodies with nothing better to do than complain at town council meetings.

Edit: less snarkily put, the people doing the forbidding are not representative of society and are not acting in our collective best interests

Pretend there is a dark shroud covering away all boundaries of your property line. Whatever elements, whether noise, shadow, smell, smoke, etc enter into your property volume, you are allowed to complain about. Anything outside of that, you are not. How damned hard is that?

Do you have any examples of zoning or land use laws that don't fit your definition of 'things we are allowed to regulate'?

We needed to submit drawings of the garage, explain that it fit well with the main building, a distinct house from 1909, well known in the neighbourhood. Describe the colour to be used, including the colour on the garage door.

They come and check that the foundations get placed within four inches (10 cm) of what the building permit allows.

Do I mind? No. End result is good, took longer than expected due to heavy load on the city planning department.

In some villages in Switzerland you get fined if you don't have the right colour flowers on your balcony. (Or maybe the flowers showed up on your doorstep, with a mandatory bill, without having to ask.) :)

Edit:splng

Given that the two condos that sold near me (one next door, and one two doors away) went in the 300k-350k range, it doesn't seem to be depressing the property values much either.

A land owner close to where the city is now shouldn't be able to squat on that land at the cost of the opportunity it can provide to the neighborhood(s) around it.

Should we also TAX vacant or idle storefronts that seem to have zero foot traffic any given hour of any given day? (SF seems to have dozens of those every city block. One wonders if those are some kind of fronts for illicit activities. They seem to never change ownership even with skyrocketing rents for office space nearby.)

Should a street level business that serves a large number of residents, get TAX BREAKS? Like a grocery store that vends fresh produce as opposed to a boutique book store that specializes in first editions?

Should they also get favorable lease terms, mandated by the city?

Should businesses that, by nature, serve out of town-ers be forced to move to designated neighborhoods?

Should empty storefronts be forced to take up tenants who could serve the needs of the residents?

Is TAXING even the solution to any of these problems?

Not to say it shouldn't be done, but there are definitely two edges to that sword.

When you bulldoze black neighborhoods to build the expressway that serves your suburb of single family homes, that's when there is a problem.

When the tax base of poor neighborhoods subsidize the burden of infrastructure support of affluent neighborhoods, that's when there is a problem. [0]

0. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/10/poor-neighborh...

That's what I propose anyway. Yes, I am very aware of what a big problem we've had in the 20th century with private developers colluding with municipalities to take land from the poor, use it to build things for the wealthy, and get taxpayers to pay for as much of the related infrastructure as possible.

There are even more things you definitely don't and can't pay for your own use - fire stations, police, the salaries of the DMV employees that regulate drivers licenses so someone who doesn't know how to drive doesn't crash into your house. There's a huge long-tail of public goods that serve everyone in every urban or suburban area, no getting around it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/03/nyregion/on-a-block-of-si...

Check out the front-side picture. What do you think would happen to resale value? If you think property owners will continue to buy houses and give up any hope of actionable damages in the race to the bottom of this tragedy of the commons, you're delusional.

Buy a house if you like it and want to live in it for the next 30 years. Then you won't care about resale value.

Should we also feel bad for people who decided to short a bunch of random stocks because they had a gut feeling? Mortgages are highly leveraged, and are not inherently a safe investment. What makes them safe is when you're buying something you intend to live in anyway, because you'll always need some form of housing, you're just prepaying for it.

Besides, long term, this will make the neighborhood denser and ultimately increase land value. As long as you hold on long enough your resale value may actually go up. Either way, resale value is not something legitimate everyday people should be concerned with, only speculators. If you're not ready to commit to live somewhere for the next 30 years, rent.

It's not on your property and it was built up to local code and zoning regulations.

[1] http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/12/16/249342738/in-...

[2] http://www.kshb.com/news/region-missouri/new-city-ordinance-...

The UK has a lot of Victoria era terraced houses, and in big cities it's pretty common to see the attic converted into another bedroom or an extension build on the garden [0]. If you are the first person in your street doing it, you'll have a hard time getting permission from the council, but if someone else has done it, it'll be a lot easier.

[0] https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2016/05/landells-road-alma...

You can still go somewhere where there isn't a HOA or there is a competing HOA. In many US cities today, there is no option, because zoning is municipal, not a HOA rule.

These days, builders always create an HOA. The options to avoid an HOA are very limited. You can settle for something really old. In theory you can become a builder yourself, but buying 30 acres and putting in streets and storm drains and... is a huge investment and a huge amount of time and effort. Even then, there are places where you simply can't do it due to zoning.

i really like this alternate universe where you have to fight govt in order to build smaller

--

here in the bay area it's the exact opposite. between zoning [1], height limits, Discretionary Review, CEQA and "environmental impact" reviews, it is unbelievably hard to build density here.

projects are delayed in unpredictable ways ranging from weeks to years, often while a developer pays rent and property tax on a vacant lot.

the resulting artificial scarcity inflates rents, which is great for incumbent property owners. boomers who have owned property for really long time are often essentially exempt from property tax due to Prop 13. [2]

[1] i made a map: https://dcpos.ch/yimby/zoning

[2] example: https://twitter.com/hanlonbt/status/769662484936429569

--

the city kinda wallows in its own bureaucracy. back in 2004, they won funding to build a rapid transit bus line on Geary St. volunteers knocked on doors, voters voted, a ballot initiative passed. just weeks ago, it passed "Environmental Impact Review".

http://sfbamo.com/news/after-13-years-geary-rapid-bus-projec...

it was stuck in EIR for 13 years.

We need to have zoning laws.

"You'll gradually get more density and less traffic this way over time, assuming that's what people want "

Once a city has been structured, it's nary impossible to 'unstructure'.

"The root of the problem is the impulse to be disgusted by your neighbor's choices, "

We live in a community and we have no choice but to have rules & laws - they just need to be done intelligently.

Cities like Frankfurt and Munich are very close to ideal. They have 'just right' urban density, good Trams, Subways and Trains - and it works extremely well. You can get where you need to quickly, there's not a lot of traffic - and ample choice for those who want to have a 'big house' vs. 'smaller home' vs. 'urban flat'.

North Americans really screwed up - and it has a lot to do with builders, bad zoning etc.

If people were actually 'given the choice' of semi-dense urban living + easy commute to slightly more dense suburbs - they would usually take it.

In North America - people 'have less choice' and 'less options' because one of the key ingredients: public transport (i.e. trams, trains and subways) requires some degree of collective organization, as well as some foresight with respect to urban planning.

It seems a little 'anti choice' to opt for a Euro-style city, but really, there is a lot of 'choice' and the effectiveness of basic public transport is so awesome for people that I can't imagine anybody would want to opt out.

For example, I don't think anyone in all of Europe would opt for 'less' transit services, they are usually great and used heavily - and you can still drive if you want.

Zoning laws, especially ones as expansive as what the US has, have only existed as they are for about 60 years. My still living grandmother can recollect how the process to buy and build her house was straightforward - you buy the lot from the private owner, you draft up your own design, you buy materials and you build your house. No county zoning code, no state inspector.

This is in suburban PA, where pretty much 50-70% of standing homes were built pre-zoning and there is no new home owner being "exploited" here - you simply get 2 inspectors to look over the house for code violations, deduct the cost of getting the house to code compliance from the sale price, and make that your offer.

> Once a city has been structured

There are cities around the world that have existed in some form for thousands of years. They constantly evolve and change, and to think we are at some point in progress that it won't happen anymore seems like undue hubris. Cities will absolutely continue to change, the only difference being if cities want to use the law to prevent organic change and growth, it will simply go elsewhere and the city will wither and die.

The reason NA doesn't get public transit is a vicious cycle, with historical motivations:

* Awful zoning and building code means new construction cannot happen, leading to city rot.

* City rot drives money away, and leaves the husk to the poor.

* The poor have no collective will or enough economic impact to justify investment, so the cities they reside in never see infrastructure development that would drive economic growth.

* The fleeing rich seek extraordinary zoning blockades to keep the poor (ie, minorities) out, but by taking the money with them they take the growth opportunities that attract anyone less than lavish.

* The rich become extraordinarily NIMBY to defend against undesirables moving near their neighborhoods. Additionally, they use their influence in zoning and NIMBY policy to zone / structure where they live in unsustainable and culturally hostile ways to project their desired vision for where they live.

* The economic stagnation the extreme amount of overregulation causes pushes you back to eventual rot, and you restart the cycle.

As long as you don't actually want a big property and cars at a middle class cost. In the many US suburbs, you can get a 3000 Sq ft home with a two car garage (not included in the area calc) for less than $200k and be within a half hour drive from a major city center.

So those German cities are only 'ideal' if you have different priorities.

Also - Germany is quite a bit smaller than the US so property prices are an issue.

There's no reason there couldn't be a 'Frankfurt, Maine' - with large homes a little further out - and still cheap.

I'm not aware of any city in the world where someone can purchase a 3000 Sq ft+ property with a two car garage for less than 4x the average annual family income and have access to amazing public transportation.

Everywhere has busses, trams, trains and cities have subway.

If you really want a huge home and want to 'ride public transit' - then it's possible to get one near or by a bus route, or a short walk from the station at the village.

Or you can buy a little further out, and drive 2 minutes to the village and catch the train when needed.

"Good transportation requires high density or or high property values to pay the taxes required to build it."

No, it just requires foresight, social buy in and a tax base.

Almost everywhere in Europe has really good transport - and it actually is possible to buy big homes, very few want them.

>Almost everywhere in Europe has really good transport

No, it doesn't. If your bar for good public transportation is a bus route and a drive to a nearby train station, then the US has good public transportation as well because every city has buses.

Good transportation is within the cities like Paris, Vienna, Rome, London. Trains run at least every 10 minutes and can get you nearly anywhere in the city within a half hour. It has to be good enough that it's actually faster and more convenient than driving. All of the houses on these train stops are very expensive or very small (or both if you're in London).

No garage, a carport is enough for the few times a year someone needs to park a car there.

Bus stops every 90 minutes, so not exactly amazing, but good enough for the occasional trip to the city.

Note that bus service doesn't need lots of tax money to build up infrastructure, so it can be built out into even sparsely populated areas.

If that's your bar for good public transportation, then the US has amazing public transportation.

That's not how it works. Aggregate preferences doesn't, necessarily, give you the best of worlds. All kind of local minimums and nasty equilibriums are possible.

Houston is the counterexample to your thesis.

Maybe that's not your optimal amazing perfect development. But it doesn't count as not going up.

Of course, it's also growing out at a tremendous rate as well.

Of course, Houston is not helped by having weather not terribly conducive to walking year round.

aaaaand I can safely ignore everything you say.

People still live there.

Changing zoning and eliminating minimum parking requirements, height limitations and setbacks is a good start.

Case studies? Towns in the US before zoning, and much of modern Europe?

Politically... it's a much tougher problem. People are used to their 'burbs and feel they have a right to tell other people what to do with their own land.

Signing up for organizations like the various YIMBY groups, Strong Towns, and so on is probably a good first step.

If you don't have a local YIMBY group - make one!

Make it so I can still store my car (near) my unit. Also that there's a GOOD loading dock so I can get items to/from my unit and transport.

This might be a mega-garage at the edge of a city with moving belt people movers and giant commercial promenades that are covered indoor malls /between/ buildings.

It might just be more parking under the building out of sight.

I also NEED sufficient privacy. I don't want to hear my neighbors slamming the microwave around, food processioning, or cleaning. Nor do I want to hear that idiot above me who thuds around too much. Build it in to the fire and privacy codes that there WILL be walls of sufficient thickness.

Make that inner wall a complete full one, no plumbing or electrical/etc. That's where all of the insulation goes. That's the disconnect between units. Then /outside/ of that build the utility / facing wall that isn't for support, it's for finishing and routing of wall items.

The roof? I'm not sure how to handle that other than, maybe something similar.

Then, what I want, give me a good choice of true high-speed (Ethernet/Fiber) ISPs.

Also, what other people want. Do all of the above, but also build in PLENTY of FAMILY sized units. Units with 4+ real rooms and a common area. Also make it easier to sublet within those rooms for friends (this means the inner doors might need locks as well, and should also sound-isolate).

It works, but it's no good for daily driving. You can get out of town in a car with some patience, but you're going to take the train in town.

If you can accept that, you can have it all. But no American city has made that choice.

At least part of the issue is a chicken and egg type problem. Older city housing stock mostly does not meet your criteria (or it does but costs several millions of dollars and has no density), so people oppose dense urban housing, so it doesn't get built, so we never get to see how it actually can meet the criteria people care about.

Not everywhere. Salt Lake City for example has wide streets and multi-story underground garages to allow locals and commuters alike to drive to the city, with a walkable city center above the garages. The newest residential buildings in the city also advertise their double-walled soundproofing between units.

One issue I have with a lot of smaller cities with walkable cores is that you run out of choices pretty quickly. I'm familiar with a number of places in that vein and they're fine to visit once in a while but I think I'd tire of them as an example of "city living" pretty quickly if I were looking for that sort of thing.

- SF is going to be a lot more crowded, noisy, less clean, obvious signs of poverty. Nothing you can really do to address it other than be aware that some areas are best generally avoided.

- On the other hand, SF has a lot more culture, restaurant variety, and is just a more interesting urban environment than SLC. So, basically, take advantage of that. SF, more than even most larger cities, has a huge number of interesting nooks and crannies to explore.

- Generally speaking, smaller cities often do have some degree of walkability in a central core but you're still crowded in to some degree while you lack the variety and opportunities that preferred large cities have to offer. (I'm not personally much of a fan of smaller cities. I think they tend to have city disadvantages without giving me offsetting benefits.)

Markets would probably also provide units without all the above and while you may not want to live there, perhaps someone would accept it rather than not be able to live in an area at all.

And Houston. There are many case studies, and they point in many directions.

https://urbanedge.blogs.rice.edu/2015/09/08/forget-what-youv...

>“We do have a lot of land-use regulations,” Festa said. “We still have a lot of stuff that looks and smells like zoning.” To be be more precise, Houston doesn’t exactly have official zoning. But it has what Festa calls “de facto zoning,” which closely resembles the real thing. “We’ve got a lot of regulations that in other cities would be in the zoning code,” Festa said. “When we use it here, we just don’t use the ‘z’ word.”

Both places started from quite a different place than a modern US municipality. A little too glib an answer, I think.

Main difference between Japan and US is that the zoning is "zoning class or lower", not "zoning class"

So an area that is "factories" can also have commercial stores or residential areas. Areas that are zoned for high rise offices can also have high rise residencies or low-rise offices.

This means that decisions on what gets built in an area are much more guided by what people want. Convenience stores get placed in the middle of neighborhoods (same zoning class as small housing), because.... that's the logical thing to do. Small 3 people companies just set up shop in an appartment, not needing to get more expensive office space.

The end result: if a neighborhood is far from a super market, someone will quickly buy up a plot of land and set one up. Services go where they need to. The lack of reclassification also avoids regulatory hurdles and potential NIMBY vetos.

Case in point: next to where I live, there used to be a large factory. It's gotten demolished and is being replaced by a couple apartment complexes + a grocery store + book store. The process went very quickly, with little issue.

It helps that the transit companies are also real estate, so there's a bit of planning on that end for larger development. But most of the growth is organic, and there are a lot of players.

Which makes it an exceptionally poor case study for our purposes.

Also, Japan is about the size of California while America is one of the largest countries on Earth.

What specifically about urban environments in Japan and Europe won't work in the US?

Some people still own cars but at least they think twice, and often share one per family. And not having so many cars per capita means non-luxury businesses must cater to public transit users.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_of_Entitlement

So the zones set an upper bound but not a lower bound.

More info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12325992

So you could start with the commercial zones and simply allow them to become mixed use. And for new developments, you could authorize mixed use cases. In a lot of areas they're currently forbidden, even with no existing residents.

http://newworldeconomics.com/the-eco-metropolis/

and the other articles on that site give some ideas about how to make it work.

> Now, the funny thing is that the New Suburbanists don’t hold any other urban place as an ideal either. They don’t point to a single urban place in the world and say, “yes, this is what I want.” But the fact is, the world has a good selection of functioning, enjoyable, pleasant metropolises. Tokyo is my favorite

> My definition of an urban environment is one where it is easier to not own a car than to own one.

Totally agree with this, and I simply can't understand why neighborhoods like this are so rare in North America. Tokyo, from what little time I've spent there, strikes me as a near perfect lifestyle, such a high proportion of completely walkable neighborhoods, plenty of green parks, plenty of incredible and cheap places to eat, and all connected by an efficient train system. Granted, population helps a lot in this, but it's certainly not something we could work towards in most places.

Vancouver Canada has quite a few neighborhoods that are fairly similar, but the problem with moving forward is the demand for housing is so high such that as soon as something is zoned for building towards this model, the price of the land immediately rises to the point where you practically have to be a millionaire (at least) to buy anything more than 500 square feet. Because of this, this city center is doomed as far as I can tell, but I see no reason we couldn't start building mini-self-sufficient towns like this in the suburbs with the "town centre" surrounding the train station...yet, I'd bet money that we will not for reasons unknown to me.

You don't have to buy property somewhere to live there and most people throughout history have not done so, and as far as I'm aware most continue not to do so now in places like NYC, Paris, Tokyo, etc.

Reevaluate property tax / land value tax each year along with sensible zoning and development permits. Attend your local town hall meetings and offer counter arguments against NIMBYs and real estate leaches.

An example, Tyson's Corner, VA was developed over the decades as a car friendly tangle of office parks and commercial shopping. It has something like 160,000 parking spaces with a population under 20,000. The area is in the beginning of a major 40 year redevelopment plan that will cost a nontrivial percentage of a trillion dollars.

https://www.washingtonian.com/2015/03/29/the-audacious-plan-...