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Comment by danans | Hacker News Reader

What the article didn't originally mention is that Berkeley was the first city in the country to adopt single family zoning 100 years ago, in response to the large migration of African Americans to the West Coast.

Other cities of the country, seeing the opportunity to enforce segregation through zoning, followed suit, and today we live in the consequences.

Density advocates can only hope that 100 years later the counter trend also spreads as successfully.

EDIT: updated comment to reflect updated article content.

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Berkley must have been pattern-matching on Atlanta, and wanted to keep black people out of white neighborhoods. That's the explicit goal of "R-1" zoning.

The original title of the zoning districts are often conveniently left out of modern discussions. In 1922, it was:

- R1 white residence district

- R2 colored residence district

- R3 undetermined race district

There's this "1922 Atlanta Zone Plan" (authored in part by the mayor of Atlanta) that outlined the R1/R2/R3 zoning paradigm that we all live with today.

Quoting from the piece[0]:

> The residence districts are further subdivided into three race districts:

> R1 or white residence district.

> R2 or colored residence district.

> R3 or undetermined race district.

> [...]

> The above race zoning is essential in the in interest of the public peace, order and security and will promote the welfare and prosperity of both the white and colored race. Care has been taken to prevent discrimination and to provide adequate space for the expansion of the housing areas of cach race without encroaching on the areas now occupied by the other.

I wrote about the entire document (and copied it in its entirety) here[1].

I hope to someday see the entire zoning paradigm (residential, commercial, industrial) struck down, for the same reasons that redlining is illegal and widely understood to be immoral.

[0] https://josh.works/full-copy-of-1922-atlanta-zone-plan#race-...

[1] https://josh.works/full-copy-of-1922-atlanta-zone-plan

> With [sic] the article doesn't mention is that Berkeley was the first city in the country to adopt single family zoning 100 years ago

Literally from the article: "Berkeley was the first city in the country to enact single-family zoning more than 100 years ago."

I have done a lot of architecture... mostly technical archtectuere (data centers, dense corp HQs (goog, FB, Salesforce, Brocade, etc...) and a shit ton of medical (SF General, El Camino, Sequoia, Nome, and many others)

And I have worked in a few foreign cities (Singapore, Hong Kong, etc)

To me; Singapore is the most amazing city. But here is my takeaway from all of that WRT zoning:

There should be no commercial property or residential high-rise that does not have the following:

Every building should incorporate underground parking, and no residential building should have tenants on the ground floor and at ground level, there should be commercial space (bakeries, shops, etc.) But every building project should include parking and commercial space.

Zoning should be much more both maleable and specific at the same time.

It doesnt make sense off the cuff, but the thing is that zoning should be PER PROPERTY + ENVIRONMENT + NEED + COMMUNITY - REGULATION - NIMBYism

> There should be no commercial property or residential high-rise that does not have the following:

> Every building should incorporate underground parking, and no residential building should have tenants on the ground floor and at ground level, there should be commercial space (bakeries, shops, etc.)

I agree with that, but this ...

> But every building project should include parking.

Mandatory parking minimums are a big problem - especially in dense areas with good transit access. They drive up the cost of building significantly [1].

In mixed single/multi family neighborhoods, parking minimums make it difficult for homeowners to add ADUs and other structures that can help achieve higher density via incremental up-zoning.

We should be solving our transit problems by building better transit systems, not by building more housing for cars.

1. https://www.brookings.edu/research/parking-requirements-and-...

> every building project should include parking

How much would it cost to add parking under each building?

Could that money be used toward light rails or bullet trains.

If the alternative is surface lots which spread out the city and make it less walkable...?

It's not like that pool of money can be put into a train, right?

With the article doesn't mention is that Berkeley was the first city in the country to adopt single family zoning 100 years ago

You mean except in the headline?

The headline doesn't say why restrictive zoning was favored by so many.

My bad. I italicized the wrong phrase. Fixed.

Cool.

Should I change my answer from "in the headline" to "in the 3rd sentence" then?

It's your comment ... do whatever you want.

P.S. the article and headline have changed many times in the last hour.

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