Why shouldn't land owners be able to build whatever they want on their own property? It's not your backyard, it's your neighbors property
I was responding to (middle OP?) "Why shouldn't land owners be able to build whatever they want on their own property? It's not your backyard, it's your neighbors property" and "As long as they follow the noise and disturbance ordinances, then sure."
Those former seems to suggest getting rid of zoning altogether which would cause horrible negative externalities IMO. The latter assumes noise disturbances would somehow balance the market which I highly doubt.
It's more complicated than Sim City ever was.
jzymbaluk said "Why shouldn't land owners be able to build whatever they want on their own property? It's not your backyard, it's your neighbors property" which screams "No zoning" to me.
Then "saagarjha" said "As long as they follow the noise and disturbance ordinances, then sure." which screams "the market will naturally balance homeowner satisfaction with factories/businesses".
I responded with "Are you suggesting that nightclubs should be banned altogether? If not, then where do you suggest to put them since they are inherently noisy?" as without zoning, homeowners, businesses, and factories could be right next to each other.
Having laws about quiet times and public smells prevents the nightclub and abbattoir from locating there without blocking usages.
Chances are that a 50 story building isn't going next to a single family home without serious changes to the entire block. More likely, people want to build multi-families which are not going to ruin your sunlight. Additionally, changing all of this takes a lot of time, just because zoning may be relaxed doesn't mean overnight its going to turn in to Manhattan or Hong Kong as opposed to Paris which largely is ~6 stories and not particularly known for being a hellhole.
It is immoral to always in favor of the people lucky enough to have bought at the right time. Surely it is a difficult balance, but chances are your home has appreciated enough to give you a lot of options too.
Furthermore, when you buy a house, you are a taking a risk. You're making an investment. I don't see why the rest of the world should be bending over backwards and living in stasis to protect your investment. If you want absolute control over what happens on your block, buy your block.
You're treating all real estate as if it's the same, but the world is more complex than that. We're talking about dense metro areas, where development primarily happens to support growing populations and an influx of businesses. How many expensive homes in downtown SF have become worthless because of industrial ventures nearby? Far, far, far less than have become extremely valuable, if any. This isn't just some theory on paper.
In short there are a lot of reasons to want to regulate what people build.
And let’s not be flippant. Nobody wants the ability to build anything anywhere, but it’s eaually absurd to not build much of anything at all. You can have density and affordable housing and a good quality of life; lots of cities do it already!
You can't live in a happy, healthy community without giving up a little bit of control in favour of the common good.
In other words, you are free to build whatever you want on your own property, as long as its effects don't negatively impact the value of mine. (I personally will never block developments, but I think I would have a right to be pissed off as hell if something like that happened, still.)
That is nowhere near a good enough rule. What if I buy commercial retail property in a bustling district, but over a few years the bustling industry shifts half a mile away, leaving my district with less foot traffic and thus negatively impacting the value of my property? Have those developers harmed me in a way that should be illegal?
You may be tempted to say “well, no, obviously that’s different.” And indeed, it is obviously different. But the challenge is coming up with a rule that actually works without needing you or someone to decide on a case by case basis what is “obviously” an exception.
Second, it’s frustrating that people only think of themselves. “What about my view?” What about the hundreds or thousands of people who can’t live near their jobs or their kids’ schools because of your precious view? What about the people who will be forced to drive in and get stuck in traffic, people who probably can’t bike because they’re forced to live in another town only reachable by a long highway trip? What about the people who are forced to pay higher and higher rents because everyone blocks development everywhere in the city?
Screw your view, honestly.
However, think about how you'd feel if you bought a house and spent most of your life savings on it (like most are forced to), only to find that it drops in value dramatically putting you underwater on the payments. It's not just about their "view". They paid for amenities which (whether we like it or not) include the view and environment.
I don't even have a solution - but it's not so simple as "give up your view so more people can live near their jobs".
Also, I don’t think people’s home values drop all that dramatically when new housing is built. We’ve been putting this off for decades, but we’ve also been artificially inflating housing prices. Maybe your tiny bungalow ISN’T actually worth $500,000. Maybe decades of bad local policy have ballooned the price of your house at the expense of others.
And even so, even if building housing makes your house decrease in value, that’s still not a good reason to prevent development. I care much more they cities are healthy and plentiful housing than I do about some Boomers who got lucky with when they bought into the real estate market.
The solution is actually remarkably simple: build more housing. We did it before; plenty of other countries with more sensible zoning laws do it. There aren’t enough places for people to live. We can either start killing people, or we can put up some walls. Personally, I’m a fan of buildings.
Edit: typos (phone)
I also think it's really easy to say "sorry, you fucked up when you spent all your money on a house" if it's someone else. These aren't all "Boomers who got lucky" - they are also millennials buying their houses today at current rates.
I think we have to have more empathy for these people if we want to make progress.
Remember, this all rests on the assumption that building housing necessarily depresses property values, and that isn’t a guarantee. You can tell because it goes further than that. It’s hard to build any housing at all. My city had about 100,000 people in it. I know some smart urban planners and they estimate it would take about 20,000 to 30,000 new units to stabilize our rental market. Not drive prices down, just stabilize. But we can’t even build ONE apartment building, let alone tens of thousands of units. Even if more housing would drive property values down (which it doesn’t necessarily), it would take so much housing before it ever got to that point.
And once again, we can have empathy and we can build housing. I promise one or two apartment buildings isn’t going to ruin grandma and grandpa’s home value. I promise.
The types of people the parent is describing don't buy real estate as an investment. They buy it as an asset. And for most Americans, their house is their most valuable asset.
So can you not spare a shred of sympathy that they are hyper-conscious about what happens to the value of that asset?
Of course I can. My sympathy goes both ways.
>> (Also, building housing doesn’t just tank the value of your home, trust me.)
I'm not talking about simply increasing the supply of housing. The specific example we are discussing is a new skyscraper blocking the view from an existing one.
That means you'll pay less for your property, and you get to enjoy your view for as long as it lasts, and keep some money in your pocket.
If on the other hand you do have all sorts of rights to prevent anyone from building out your view then that same house will cost you a lot more - perhaps more than you'll be able to afford.
Either of these situations seems fair, because you know the rules in advance.
Crappy situations arise when the rules are not clear. In that case, you don't really know how much you should pay for that house, and you may suffer immense angst when your view disappears.
I have a right to what I pay for. This is simply inarguable.
In most highrises, the view tends to make up a significant portion of the value. This is why units become more expensive the higher up they are: the view is better from a higher altitude.
So essentially, when a developer comes and builds another highrise next door, they are destroying a big part of the value of the original highrise units.
So, if I have a right to what I pay for, and someone is doing something to negatively affect that, the NIMBY argument becomes rather straight-forward.
(Again, these aren't my actual views. I'm simply saying I can sympathize with NIMBYs, even though I despise them.)
Hence the stalemate I guess.