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Comment by spicybright | Hacker News Reader

Wonder if zoning laws have a big effect on that.

The effect of zoning is vanishingly small relative to the effects of money. An insurance company investing its reserves isn't going to change its risk tolerance just because zoning changes.

These people look at the numbers produced by their model and send their money where indicated. It's why Walgreens and CVS will build on two corners of the same intersection. Both have the same traffic counts and same catchment demographics.

> It does but the dirty secret is that given enough money or interest zoning is a relatively weak opponent

Neither interest nor money are a given and the amount of either necessary varies wildly by jurisdiction. Even quite small obstacles can change outcomes a lot. Zoning has quite real effects.

It does but the dirty secret is that given enough money or interest zoning is a relatively weak opponent - there jus tidbit that much desire for mixed use buildings in most areas.

(The low-key method for normal people is to get “variances” - which are not as impossible to obtain as you may think if you work slowly and quietly on them.)

I’ve attended a few variance hearings (always in support of my neighbors who wanted to get a variance for their property). Variances are granted here for the flimsiest of reasons, to regular people who don’t have a clue how to ask for what they want and what they saw two other people get variances for in the same hearing.

There is very little mixed use zoning in suburban areas...

Probably more like there’s semantics triggered fear in having home literally on top of a supermarket, as opposed to two being mentally separate.

I remember seeing a condo complex on top of a Ralph’s in San Diego: the Ralph’s was 24 hour and it always struck me as being incredibly convenient (the condos had an elevator direct into the store) - who needs a pantry at all when you have a 24hr grocery store literally five seconds away?

I used to live above the Safeway near the Giants baseball stadium in San Francisco - it wasn’t 24 hours at the time (not sure if it is now) but you’re right, it was crazy convenient.

Far less food waste too, I’d rarely buy more than a bag’s worth of food at a time and would just go shop 3+ times per week.

There is a supermarket in Boston over an interstate highway. The store is nothing special so I never thought much of it but now I'm really wondering what kind of political gymnastics had to occur to make that happen. At this point it's such a landmark that traffic reports refer to it as "the supermarket."

It's the supermarket doesn't want housing on top. If it is the only way to get the location and the location is incredibly good, then the supermarket will accept it. Leasing to a supermarket is incredibly more profitable than leasing or selling housing.

The Sid Meier thesis of strictly purpose-oriented land-use allocation is pervasive in the postwar urban planning consciousness.

At the professional level, urban planners meet confidentially with developers and figure out how to make projects happen. What you see is what money wants to do. The professional urban planner's job is to generate economic development. Theories live in the academy.

A planner at my firm recently told me, with complete confidence, that on-street parking increases safety. Then I was told that research from AASHTO was just not something this person agreed with, and haven’t I heard of Strong Towns? Here’s a lovely YouTube video.

I wanted to rip my own eyes out.

The planners at the firm are paid to do what paying clients want. That’s what everyone there is supposed to do. What matters is that checks don’t bounce.

I’m actually trying to say that it is an industry dominated by snake-oil, charlatans and coffee-table “science”. There is no standard or obvious measure of performance, and liability is usually of little concern. The planners I know are hardly puppets of the real estate cabal and much more victims of naïveté and wiz-bang marketing. Like, I’m assuming rails-devs a decade ago and, maybe, rust devs today.

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