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Comment by Isamu | Hacker News Reader

>If so many people live in suburbs, it must be because that’s what they prefer, right? But the evidence is to the contrary.

This article makes its point from the book "Zoned Out" (2005.) Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the argument is that zoning policies make suburban sprawl, not free markets. They argue that if zoning restrictions were lifted and development responded to free market forces, higher density housing would result and more people would prefer that to sprawl.

I think that might be true - moderately. You might get a relative increase of higher-density housing.

But I think sprawl just represents a long tail of real preferences among the population. It may be relative price, it may be having a yard, it may be the suburban school districts, it can be all kinds of things. And yeah, if people had control, the suburbs wouldn't sprawl forever. It would be just their nice suburban neighborhood and everybody else could be jammed into the city.

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I would hold up Houston as the counterexample. It has zero zoning policies whatsoever and is one of the most sprawled cities in the country, and everyone lives in low-density single family ranch homes with huge floor plans and drives an hour to work each way.

Developers still basically just plop large single-family residential developments on random plots of land with few ways to stop them. In the absence of zoning, developers will not build denser properties because they’re riskier.

That's a counterexample to the article, not the person you are replying to, right?

In fact that's such a strong counterexample to the article you can basically discount it entirely.

> will not build denser properties because they’re riskier.

Or because people don't want them. What's riskier about them?

I commented just before you, so you probably didn't see it. But Houston mandates parking minumum, setbacks of houses, very wide roads, and long blocks.

Those are all pro-sprawl. My dense, walkable neighbourhood in Montreal would be illegal in Houston.

https://marketurbanism.com/2016/09/19/how-houston-regulates-...

Also, nobody wants to walk in Houston. AC is required to survive there.

Perhaps if buildings were a bit taller with people and businesses closer, you'd require less walking and it would be spent more in the shade.

There's also the radical European idea of planting (gasp) trees in the streets to provide shade when the sun is out.

(And, while we're dreaming, putting benches in the streets so that tired walkers could have some rest, and maybe even putting little plazas at street intersections to provide spaces for people to socialize and thus making the whole process of walking around the city more enjoyable).

Also gasp mass transit. A dozen small compact cites with trams (streetcars) modern ones get up to 40mph can serve to create a good cbd at the hub, fit well with walking and cycling while providing critical mass for there to be enough things and places nearby. If service is 24/7 and stops are spaced close enough you can even park most cars outside the city.

I've been to Cuba. There are old cities in the Spanish style, and new ones (1950s) in the american style.

In the spanish cities you can walk comfortably. The buildings are tall enough and near enough to the sidewalk that you can always find shade. And everyone walks on the shaded side of the street.

In the american cities the buildings are set back, and there is no shade. People still walk (they're poor), but there are a lot more horse carriages that pass by to offer people lifts. Walking isn't so feasible.

Walking has never been feasible in the South US. It works in Cuba because Cuba is a small island with a lot of people. Density is forced, so you don’t need a car to get to everything — thus your walking trips are 10-20 minutes long.

Living in the south, it would take me 15 minutes walking just to leave my neighborhood. And most neighborhoods remotely outside the cities do not have sidewalks. So it’s a chicken-and-egg problem.

Just bear in mind most cities in the south (especially Texas) were very small prior to the mass adoption of automobiles and air conditioning. My hypothesis is that the car was required for large Texas cities to exist, and as a result the city has always been a sprawled mess.

So the real question is whether we should build cities this way in the first place? But it’s kind of an irrelevant question — we do and will continue to build cities this way regardless of it being a good idea or not.

That's a good argument: the development of cities post-AC and post-car strongly favours the current model.

But, is it possible that cities were small because the wrong building style was used? After all, the Spanish colonies to the south of the US are warmer than the South, but had large cities.

Cuba is small? The length, just under 800 miles, is about the same as the distance from New York to Chicago.

There are underground and above ground non auto networks. See Canada, las Vegas, Portland transit mall

I just did a cursory search, and houston has mandatory parking minimums. Those are one of the most sprawl policies you can find.

It also mandates setbacks from the street, wide roads, and long blocks.

Overall Houston does a lot of stuff right! But, I think they have still baked sprawl into their system.

From what I can see, my dense Montreal neighbourbood would be illegal in Houston. (It's illegal almost everywhere in North America, of course)

https://marketurbanism.com/2016/09/19/how-houston-regulates-...

The aerial picture of downtown Houston with all its parking lots is a favorite to show the deleterious effects of mandatory parking minimums: http://www.cdandrews.com/2014/09/surface-parking-lot-design-...

In the same blog I linked (different article I think) they actually noted that the downtown has no mandatory minimums, but it needs lots of lots because there are mandatory minimums elsewhere and everyone has cars as a result.

Part of my point is that I think the cause-effect relationship may be reversed anyway. Texas is also so hot in the summer that people will not be walking outside for any appreciable period of time; it becomes a health risk after a certain point when temperatures can be above 100F / 90% humidity for months on end.

It’s not an accident that Texas looked more like Montana in 1900 than California. The mass adoption of automobiles and air conditioning made large cities in Texas possible; and the low population density made land cheap.

The centers of most big southern cities were never walkable. Most of those cities would never have existed without cars. I don’t know how you introduce density into a situation like that, and I don’t think zoning rules would be able to undo the damage of the last century. These cities were built around cars, and you can’t just roll that back without remaking the whole city and displacing many, many people.

“Wait, why are we deregulating again? It didn’t even work the last time.”

“Oh ... well ... we just didn’t deregulate enough last time. Let’s just deregulate a little more, and we’ll see the results!”

The parent gave an exact rationale that answered the point made...an intelligent response would be appropriate. Not... this.

Houston doesn't have zoning, but it does have development regulations that accomplish what zoning codes accomplish in other US cities.

https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/DevelopRegs/

I have to respectfully disagree as someone who has lived in Houston for more than a few years. The density in Houston is bimodal because the traffic makes commuting so painful.

There are huge numbers of zero lot line 2-4 story townhouses being built within say 5 miles of downtown. 4-6 houses on 1/4 acre so not a lot of room to waste.

And then once you get past say 5-10 miles from downtown the sprawl is undeniable.

But to paint Houston as all sprawl just isn't honest.

> But I think sprawl just represents a long tail of real preferences among the population. It may be relative price, it may be having a yard, it may be the suburban school districts, it can be all kinds of things. And yeah, if people had control, the suburbs wouldn't sprawl forever. It would be just their nice suburban neighborhood and everybody else could be jammed into the city.

That's pretty much it. Everyone who lives in a suburb likes a different subset of suburban features, and that all aggregates together to result in the kinds of suburbs we have.

It makes sense to consider zoning law to be a reflection of people's preferences rather than a constraint on them. In many cases zoning laws are the result of established homeowners trying to preserve the suburban features they like.

This logic doesn't square with what we observe in voting patterns. When high rent cities go from majority homeowner to majority renter, the laws start to change to legalize more housing.

That doesn't mean renters didn't care for housing when they were a minority, it just means they were efficiently marginalized.

It is also culture that plays a big part.

I've lived in very high density housing in Japan (20 floor manshion type apartment) and medium density in US (2 level apartment).

Higher density in Japan is much more pleasant due to the culture of being considerate of others.

If I have to live in the US, I will choose suburbia for that reason.

How more considerate? Noise wise?

Not same person, but yes.

With noise, with garbage sorting, etc...

Japanese people tend to follow all rules, written and unwritten. I guess Americans follow only rules that can be enforced (cf. Uber, Airbnb, etc...)

Probably from a culture of rebellion against Britain colonial government... In some cases it is good and in some bad.

In Japan there is also no tolerance for the 1% that ruins public spaces for everyone (compare Tokyo subways against San Francisco subways). This allows true public spaces that can be shared by everyone.

I live in Central Asia, which is poor and people there are not very considerate or tend to follow the rules, yet cities are clean and relatively nice, especially the big ones. The reason why the cities are okay, because the people and especiallt governments know how to live urban life, how to plan properly etc.

I live in Tokyo and well, I'm not so sure. Maybe you just got lucky or I got unlucky. I've lived in places where they neighboring couple would scream and throw things at 3-4am for 30 minutes every couple of weeks. Lived in a place across the kanda river from the Chou line where the trains were so loud I couldn't hear the TV when they went by. My current place is nice enough but I feel I have to tiptoe all the time which I hate. I want to not have to think about it rather then always have to think about it.

Those are not unique to Japan though. My SF apartment had the thinest floors ever and I got all kinds of complaints even though I'm way more aware of the noise I make than most, even going so far as to always watch TV with wireless headphones.

Conversely I've lived in apartments designed for noise in Los Angeles where the landlord told me it was okay to run the washing machine 24/7 because the neighbors wouldn't be able to hear it next door as the walls were concrete and doubled with a space between to absorb the sound.

I know some of the newer 20-30 floor apartment buildings in Japan are built similarly but I don't currently make enough to live in a place like that, probably $3k-$4k a month for a 2LDK

Not being able to walk across your own home at night is reason 1 of 100 why I choose suburban sprawl over high density. It's like a damned prison.

> represents a long tail of real preferences among the population

The other problem with this long tail is that (like other long tails of, say, bandwidth or storage utilization) it has a disproportionate effect on the whole. If 60% of, say, 100k people in a metropolitan area prefer to live in urban, high-density housing at 20,000 people per square mile, and 20% prefer to live in low-density suburbs at 4,000 people per square mile, you have 3 square miles of urban housing and 10 square miles of suburbs. And the small number of rural folks on the outskirts who are living the American dream of having their own 40 acres (160 houses per square mile) have an even larger effect on average land usage.

> They argue that if zoning restrictions were lifted and development responded to free market forces, higher density housing would result and more people would prefer that to sprawl.

I think this is half true (that zoning regulations have caused a good amount of sprawl) but I think that other posters here are right that the free market may also create sprawl, as it will respond to preferences and cultural biases that may favor sprawl.

Really the point of zoning is to prevent that, to guide the market toward development that is in the interest of the common good. Without zoning regulations you tend to get pretty nasty tragedy of the commons effects.

Zoning codes shouldn't be overly restrictive, in fact they should be a gentle touch that doesn't interfere with competition very much, but they are often hugely beneficial and guide the market toward a solution that benefits the community at large.

Some of the free market attempts in the UK ended up with Milton Keynes which is pretty much the American auto style roads come first. While others ended up with city of London which is highly walkable and dense being just over a square mile. Cost of land and transit is probably the deciding factors for the free market. Conversely regulation has given more walkable areas (mixed zones, offices, and small retail on the street with residental) so it's not just a case of the amount of regulation but what they say.

The article seems to support this argument:

>In Boston, about 40 percent of respondents said they preferred denser, more pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods, while in Atlanta, just under 30 percent of respondents did so.

In the absence of prohibitive zoning laws and other restrictions, the split between urban and exurban properties should converge to align with consumer preferences. Of course, it’s possible that consumer preferences will change if increased urban development results in lower crime, cheaper housing, better schools and transit, etc.

Not sure about Atlanta but Boston suburban lots tend to be about half an acre, the ones outside of the 495, closer to an acre. Inside the 128 they do get smallish though. So given those sizes, I’m not surprised people are okay with “more density”.

We're just outside the 495, our lot is just under 5 acres. There's a acre minimum zoning requirement in some areas, but most lots in our area are larger.

Judging by Zillow's map, 5+ acre lots are a small minority of the properties in that area. Probably less than 10%, although 10% could feel like "most" compared to places where it's closer to 0%.

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