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Comment by ashtonkem | Hacker News Reader

> I had a realization while going through the process that this is the thing that causes our cities to be so drastically inferior to european cities which were designed before zoning laws were in vogue.

Zoning laws are in fact an American invention, and they were originally designed to limit where Chinese immigrants could live and work[0]. Their actual impact on the quality of a city was kind of besides the point; the only goal was to hurt racial out groups. Viewed from this lens, it isn't terribly surprising that zoning laws haven't done a great job at making American cities good places to work & live; that's not what those tools were designed for.

0 - https://fee.org/articles/the-racist-history-of-zoning-laws/

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I loathe zoning laws, but they were not "originally designed to limit where Chinese immigrants could live and work"; that was one application, but not the whole story. Zoning was more about protecting rich neighborhoods full of mansions from a 'blight' of apartment buildings.[1] Single-family house zoning is what differentiates North America from other regions.

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt1287cxr

"Protecting propety values" has been code for "keep out undesirable minorities" for a very long time, in the US.

I didn't say "protecting propety [sic] values", I said "protecting rich neighborhoods". If you'd like more details, I'd recommend reading the book, it is very detailed and well-written.

Well, it's code for "keep density low" and "keep traffic out of my property while I go generate traffic on other people's property". The results are the same though.

Property values often increase from increasing density (ie, replacing my five-million-dollar mansion with a twenty-million-dollar apartment building on the same lot). The zoning doesn't necessarily protect property values as such, so it's an important distinction.

I couldn't read much at the link, so looked up about the book. Found this line in a review fairly relevant.

>Hirt deliberately spends little time on racism, partly because it's too easy a target and too obvious.

https://www.planetizen.com/node/74628/book-review-zoned-usa

Zoning has been applied against Chinese immigrants, as well as other minorities, but it was also used in many relatively racially homogeneous areas. Again, I strongly disapprove of zoning (and many other city planning activities), but I don't think racism was really 'responsible' for zoning, and I don't think that calling all bad policies 'racist' is a good idea.

The start of many US zoning laws was based on racism though. No one is saying every zoning law was racist, or that racism is the sole reason they are bad, but their origin is undoubtedly tied to racism.

Like many policies, their origins are complicated, and subject to 'bootlegger and baptist' type motivations.[1] Going back to my first post in this thread, I was saying that zoning laws were not "originally designed to limit where Chinese immigrants could live and work", and I stand by my comment.

As a bit of an aside, I find it disturbing how political debate is becoming pure sophistry, where winning the day is dependent on proving that the other side is racist. Zoning is bad, whether or not it's racist.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootleggers_and_Baptists

>As a bit of an aside, I find it disturbing how political debate is becoming pure sophistry, where winning the day is dependent on proving that the other side is racist. Zoning is bad, whether or not it's racist

Such an odd reply to my comment of

>No one is saying every zoning law was racist, or that racism is the sole reason they are bad

Yes, but you're arguably still doing the same thing, just slightly more indirectly.

>The start of many US zoning laws was based on racism though. No one is saying every zoning law was racist, or that racism is the sole reason they are bad, but their origin is undoubtedly tied to racism.

Here, there's the pretty explicit connotation of "racism created zoning laws", and that's only a mental step or two removed from "zoning laws are racist because racism created them". I do think that nickff's comment was pulling from the current argumentative zeitgeist as well though.

>Here, there's the pretty explicit connotation of "racism created zoning laws", and that's only a mental step or two removed from "zoning laws are racist because racism created them"

Mental steps I did not make as I don't know they are adequately supported by historical data. I mentioned this in the post.

> they were not "originally designed to limit where Chinese immigrants could live and work"

Right, its was also Black people: https://www.asu.edu/courses/aph294/total-readings/silver%20-...

What's the relevance of what you cite to OP having trouble clearing a commercial venture to apparently serve food, beverages, and test out vehicles with combustible engines?

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