edit: And it also comes into conflict with political progressives for essentially not being progressive enough, since it allows for new housing to be built that some people are still priced out of. So I think the angle that they're trying to hand-wave zoning deregulation as being "good" by using the word "progressive" is doubly misguided.
Removing zoning is a (classical) liberal move.
In particular “residential” zoning was because Chinese were known for running businesses like laundries out of their homes.
However, the left wing boomers currently running cities came up in the 60s when opposing construction like freeways and urban renewal was the activist thing to do, since they intentionally placed the freeways to tear down black neighborhoods.
Well, like I said, upzoning is still not super popular with progressives as in American progressives, because of the leftist crossover and social justice angle there. But I still think it’s correct to describe it as progressive in the context of contemporary urbanism.
We just have to accept that these terms are overloaded and make sure we agree on what we’re talking about. “Conservative” has the exact same problem—there’s what the encyclopedia says it is, and what American conservatives say it is, and what American conservatives actually do (not such big fans of small government after all, I think).
The conservative movement never really had much to say about housing policy as far as I can tell. Classical liberals on the other hand, have been consistently anti-regulation.
Why doesn’t it make sense? Political progressives and older land-owning (relative) conservatives have different reasons for opposing upzoning, but they clearly do agree in their opposition to it.
Beyond that, I specifically called out that these terms are overloaded and I’m trying to be relatively explicit about what I mean when I use them. I’m not interested in arguing for positions I never took, e.g. that “the conservative movement never really had much to say about housing policy”. I’m not talking about any movement—I’m talking about people who are, fundamentally, conservative. They may be granola-chomping, Smartwool-and-Birkenstock-wearing, Prius-driving, ex-hippie boomers who’ve never voted GOP in their lives, but if they own land and oppose upzoning because they don’t want their single family home neighborhoods to change, then they are, in a sense (to be clear, the same sense I’ve been talking about this whole time), conservative.
I am simply using these words because they mean what they mean, and not trying to make some broader “encoded” point about politics or whatever else. If you choose to ignore the intended meaning of my comments (which I have more or less spelled out for you at this point, no contextual awareness required), that’s not my problem, and I’m not going to follow you down that rabbit hole.
edit: If there is one political point I am sort of getting at, it’s probably the hypocrisy of older self-identified “liberals” who oppose densification/upzoning. Viewed through either a classical liberal or a left-liberal lens, using regulation to block affordable housing is not good, yet a lot of these people support it because they’re the beneficiaries of the status quo. And that, in a sense, is the attitude at the core of practical conservatism.
Of course, this assumes that we're talking about the usual political definitions of "conservative" vs "liberal", which more or less correspond to "right" and "left". If we're talking about "conservative" meaning "wants to status quo", then it gets really useless because the alternative is "wants to keep changing things", which isn't a political archetype that exists in reality.
Prohibiting development was originally a progressive position because redevelopment policies were being used to displace poor and brown communities. Now people want to keep those prohibitions in place because they function as a way to keep neighborhoods exclusive and generally keep things the way they are. So defending them has become a conservative position.
> the alternative is "wants to keep changing things", which isn't a political archetype that exists in reality.
Progressive is about progress and "wants to keep changing" is the whole point. From voting rights to civil rights to economic opportunity, being progressive means demanding change. The American republic is 245 years old and still has a long way to go to live up to its ideals.
This is quite amusing to watch. This kind of deregulation is now sold on the hand-wavey idea that it solves housing affordability (with incredibly limited evidence), and the unspoken premise is that government is too incompetent and the invisible hand of the free market is uniquely qualified to solve the problem.
"Rent control doesn't fully solve the problem, so just let the market solve it instead!" is about as libertarian a position as one could possibly espouse, yet it's got a shiny coat of paint as the "YIMBY" movement. Now, if you push back with a suggestion that some combination of government initiated interventions might be more effective than just letting capital do whatever the hell it wants, you're just a conservative NIMBY who wants to keep the poors away out of their own self interest.
Generally “conservative” means maintaining the status quo. You could see how “progressive” might be the opposite if that. It’s interesting when you apply the older “liberal” label which would mean generally permissive. Obviously that label makes no sense whatsoever when describing San Francisco. In this case it sounds like they are describing entrenched interests as conservative because they want to conserve the current state of affairs. They are opposed to progress. Therefore the people opposite them must be progressive.