You have this backwards: the higher density folks do not need support from the lower density folks. It is the opposite:
>It's a fundamentally parasitic arrangement.
Except that those "riff raff" aren't footing much if any of the tax bill for the high density city. That bill is paid by the wealthier people, many of whom are living in those suberbs, subsidizing the city costs. Who is parasitizing whom here?
Rich people and poor people alike live in cities. It is basically insane to separate them physically and declare them independent. You can't define away the problems of urbanization through economic segregation.
I mean, it would be one thing to enforce physical separation while still acknowledging that both halves are part of the same city (and the same tax base), but to go so far as to say, "no, we're actually not even part of the city, despite all commonsense physical reality; we're actually just a whole separate thing over here" is really an awe-inspiring level of audacity and chutzpah.
This was done pretty much the entire history of civilization. Communist revolutions tried to ignore the human nature that leads to it and we all know how that turned out.
Your position is that the state should use central planning to determine which kinds of economic activity are allowed on which parcels and then restrict property rights accordingly. The call is coming from inside the house.
* Note that the way we are using this word is pretty vague and may be contributing extra crosstalk
Yeah, it's an awful term, because it refers to hundred-year-old densely-populated urbanized areas that directly abut core cities whose borders were artificially locked into place in the 19th Century, and to greenfield interstate-offramp developments, and just about everything in between.
But, just to address your "way on the other side" scenario: forbidding zoning is exactly what the state should do. You don't get to have democracy for core rights. It doesn't matter if everybody in the neighborhood votes to restrict property rights. They're not up to a vote, just like you can't vote to restrict freedom of speech. It's not subject to a vote.
The right to build housing on my own private property is very clearly, in my view, protected by the U.S. Constitution and restricting that right is plainly a taking. I don't care what Euclid says. It was wrongly decided.
Suburbs are a compromise.
Of course there are tradeoffs, usually in the form of a longer commute.
> In this zone it is illegal to make urban housing.
So you'd propose forcefully building your preferred style of housing everywhere, even if the local residents don't want it?
Short of declaring a dictatorship, it won't succeed to force everyone to live in the same style of building. A very large part of the population has no interest in living in a high-rise apartment.
Forcefully? When someone builds an apartment building on their own private property and voluntarily rents the units to other free actors, then obviously nobody was forced to do anything. The neighbors, on the other hand, would like to force the property owner to do something else with their land.
It's very important that we get this part clear in our minds. Zoning is coercion, not the other way around.
You'll sometimes see headlines about a "single-family home ban" whenever a city does zoning reform. No such thing exists. When we allow more uses on a city lot, we obviously have banned nothing.
And, I care about as much what the neighbors want me to do with my private property as I care what they think about my right to free expression. It's not subject to a vote. These rights are codified in our Constitution. They are not subject to a popularity contest. Some things are fundamental. We wrote those things down in a special document and put it in a folder titled, "things you don't get to vote on."
> Short of declaring a dictatorship, it won't succeed to force everyone to live in the same style of building. A very large part of the population has no interest in living in a high-rise apartment.
It's an enormous country and those people should feel free to hit the bricks (they can move, in other words). Or, hey, this is America. If you want to control what happens on a piece of private property, then buy it.
Those two sentences are contradictory.
If someone owns a plot of land with a single family home, they do get to control it by staying put living in the house they like. They don't have to "hit the bricks" just because you'd prefer to tear it down to build a highrise.
Do you think I'm talking about eminent domain, or something? I am not. I can't build a highrise on their property unless they let me. They're going to have to voluntarily sell me the land before I can do anything with it. I'm not proposing anything except that they be allowed to do that, if they wish to. They don't have to do anything.
City/property is expensive because it is desirable. The US stopped building that kind of thing post-WW2, so the supply is finite and generally not growing anymore. Zoning is such that only car-centric, low-density developments are generally allowed.
There is nothing to prevent a policy change to allow "city" building like used to happen pre-WW2:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0
> Suburbs are a compromise.
No, they are bad design that devours land like a locust which causes unnecessarily high energy use and has made climate change worse:
* https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter4/environment...
There is no good reason for car-centric suburbs, especially when the residents do not pay the externalities of their life style.
Sure some suburbs exist in the outskirts of major city centers, but across the country the vast majority do not.
Why should they pay to support that density?
If my wife declared the kitchen to be a separate part of our apartment that she's not responsible for but then came into the kitchen every single day -- worked there, ate there, met friends there -- without ever participating in the maintenance of the kitchen, then I would think she's shirking her responsibility to the whole (and I'd be right).
"What's the problem? I have defined the area where I sleep to be independent of the kitchen! What part of that don't you get?" is not a compelling argument.
It's a fundamentally parasitic arrangement.
What suburbanites want is to be close enough to the city to enjoy all the benefits of being in a major metro area, without the hassle of supporting the project of urbanity. They want all the upsides without participating in addressing the (very real) downsides.
A suburb is in physical reality little more than just another neighborhood that has declared itself to be something else entirely in order to shirk its responsibility to the whole (sort of like if I declared my bedroom to be a separate apartment, so that I didn't have to acknowledge my roommate's chore list). Declaring yourself independent of your metro's core city doesn't magically make it so. It's just sticking your head in the sand.