Comment by Lazare | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Lazare | Hacker News Reader

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You're missing the point. What's being said is this:

1. People highly praise city/town/neighborhood X for its density, walkability, livibility, sustainability, and other quality of life elements.

2. That city/town/neighbourhood could not be built today because of laws which explicitly ban the things which make it so highly praised. If it was destroyed in an earthquake, it couldn't be rebuilt in any form which shared the attributes which made it loved.

This isn't about earthquake strengthening; it's about density, parking, transport, multi-family dwellings, mixed-use neighborhoods, etc. An ocean of ink has been spilled on the problems of suburbs full of single-family homes (and zero commercial presence), but our laws frequently require that, regardless of the preferences of consumers.

(More generally: The argument for zoning laws is that local government knows better than residents what the people really want, and what makes for a good city. That does not seem to reflect reality.)

This comment likely also misses the point, but the zoning laws are not really intended to cover situations where the entire city is destroyed and rebuilt. Realistically, if the city were rebuilt from scratch today, much of what people love about it now would be gone regardless of zoning laws.

It seems like it's theoretically possible for residents and visitors in a given city to enjoy its current building stock while simultaneously desiring different standards for new construction. Whether or not that is the case in Somerville, I don't really know, but a statement that the city couldn't legally be built from scratch the same way today doesn't necessarily imply (in my mind) that the zoning laws are illegitimate.

I get that there are other issues here too, of course.

> It seems like it's theoretically possible for residents and visitors in a given city to enjoy its current building stock while simultaneously desiring different standards for new construction.

Is it? Can you explain why this would be so? Or even better, provide any evidence that this is true in any of the locations people have been discussing (Montreal, Somerville, Manhattan, Portland, etc.?)

Let's drill down and focus in particular on laws about multi-family dwellings. What logic would make them good when they already exist, but bad if you wanted to build more, and even bad if you wanted rebuild them after a natural disaster?

> What logic would make them good when they already exist, but bad if you wanted to build more

A duplex is split between two families. They both think multi-family housing is for college students, the universal bane of Massachusetts housing debates.

Talk to a typical owner of an old house, and you'll likely hear something about how they love its quirks. But would they build a house the same way today? Some probably would, but others would certainly not. This actually probably applies well outside of old homes too. I suspect something akin to the endowment effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect) plays in here.

It also makes sense to me that someone would appreciate a historical landmark but place a lesser value on a modern replica of that landmark. Similarly, I could imagine a person admiring a historical neighborhood more than a modern recreation of it.

> Let's drill down and focus in particular on laws about multi-family dwellings. What logic would make them good when they already exist, but bad if you wanted to build more, and even bad if you wanted rebuild them after a natural disaster?

I'm not sure the answer needs to be logical (see above), but even if it must be, I don't know why placing limits on something implies that it was never actually good in the first place. Natural disasters are another story for sure, but I would imagine that sort of massive rebuilding was not the primary motivation for the present zoning laws in Somerville.

Yes, the fact that you couldn't raze and rebuild Somerville does imply that the existing zoning laws are illegitimate.

Proponents of zoning talk about things like reducing congestion and preserving the character of the neighborhood. If you can't exchange like for like these arguments fall flat. Changing the rules of the game after you've won, so to speak, smacks of crony capitalism. Cynically I believe that zoning laws primarily exist to extend property rights over land that a person is unwilling or unable to buy.

Just to be clear, I didn't mean my comment as a broad defense of zoning laws. Rather, I think it's only fair to consider that there's a very large difference between the relevance of zoning laws when the city is in its infancy and zoning laws when the city is pretty much entirely built up. When the city is, say, 97% built up, any zoning laws should reflect how its residents want the last 3% developed—if at all. I do realize it's more complicated than that (what about redevelopment, for example?), and I realize zoning is fraught with issues and controversy, but I don't think it logically follows that if present zoning laws in an older built-up area don't reflect the existing building stock, that the laws are illegitimate or corrupt. You may not like the zoning laws or the general concept of zoning (I'm not sure I do either, frankly), but that's not the same argument.

Most zoning codes with which I'm familiar permit rebuilding on the same footprint even after a total destruction (fire/earthquake), even if the building does not meet current size/setback codes.

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