Just going to point out - ending single family zoning doesn't mean building a single family house is prohibited, it just means that you can build things other than a single family home on a particular plot of land.
It wasn't until the late 60's / early 70's that explicit racial discrimination was finally outlawed, and it's not a coincidence that exclusionary zoning took off immediately thereafter as a prima facie race-neutral way to achieve the same outcome.
...
But the largest legislative achievement of this emerging anti-growth coalition would be the Residential Rezoning of 1978, a project to implement stricter controls across all of San Francisco’s neighborhoods. In addition to creating 40-foot building-height limits for most residential areas, the legislation included new setback rules (regulating how far a building could be from the public right-of-way), low-density requirements (limiting the number of housing units in a given building), and overall design guidelines aimed at preserving entire neighborhoods in amber.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90242388/the-bad-design-that-cre...
Of particular concern was the fear that zoning would bring about racial and socioeconomic segregation in Massachusetts, which need not take the form of racial tests, as zoning could just as easily bring about segregation by regulating who could afford certain neighborhoods by income. Pro-zoning advocates... [went ahead anyways]
[0]: https://www.cambridgema.gov/~/media/Files/officeofthemayor/2...
Folks might not be able to choose where they live, but at least they will get cheap housing? Is that a fair trade?
But don't lose hope for direct democracy yet! A few years later Prop 13, which is arguably worse on minorities https://harvardcrcl.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/11/..., passed by a wide margin and continues to see strong support from voting demographics today.
By definition not racist.
It's why educated Blacks in the US are moving back to red Southern states more so than they're moving to blue Northeast and Western ones. It's much cheaper and easier to build new housing in suburban Dallas or Atlanta versus San Francisco, New York, or LA.
To me I view racism as a larger umbrella. Includes bias, both on the surface but also more broadly what has been cultivated as a society. Context is very important in my definition viewpoint. centuries of historic oppression, which led to unequal wealth, opportunity, and more. ongoing bias which discriminates in hiring and opportunity and more.
I view this context as a kind of 'prior' (to use a ML term I don't fully understand lol) when assessing whether or not something is 'racist.'
While on the other hand it seems like some view racism as solely a person knowingly and vocally treating one ethnicity differently and discriminating openly.
To me I agree with parent and I hold the larger viewpoint.
Because of centuries of oppression BIPOC have less money, less opportunity, own less housing, communities are segregated don't have nearly as much ownership in the 'single family neighborhoods' & that community which drives the policy we are talking about.
I don't think one can ignore that context, and its implicit bias, when looking at why these laws, regulations, zoning were (and are) being passed.
And plus many times it's also explicitly racist like the latter viewpoint; like the language Trump & Republicans use about 'invading' the suburbs.
Suburbs are de facto and de jure not racist. No one is stopping any race of people from moving to the suburbs, no law is stopping any members of any race from moving to the suburbs, etc.
You can definitely make the claim that suburbs are classist, but racist? No.
That's not what I was saying.
I'm pointing out that you for instance, could benefit from some perspective in understanding why there is disagreement between because we fundamentally have different word-views / disagree on the language of this argument.
It's like trying to argue about bikes, if your definition of bike is a self powered two wheel and mine is a motorized machine.
It's also worth noting that the same laws were applied to Asians - exclusionary zoning and housing policies led to the consolidation of populations within certain neighborhoods, like San Francisco's Chinatown: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/how-1800s-racism-...
It wasn't always the case that most Asians could (whether financially or politically) move to the suburbs.
Correlation does not imply causation.
>But if you want to exclude certain people from your neighborhood, and those people happen to often be from a certain culture/socioeconomic class…
No doubt, no one wants to live around low class riff raff. That's not race specific, and so, is by definition not racist.
>It's also worth noting that the same laws were applied to Asians - exclusionary zoning and housing policies led to the consolidation of populations within certain neighborhoods, like San Francisco's Chinatown
Now you're straw manning hard. No one is making the claim that laws of the past weren't racist. Now, they're not, and so Asians, Indians, Africans (as in recent African immigrants) all flood to the suburbs because suburbs are decidedly not racist, and are free of the riff raff.
>It wasn't always the case that most Asians could (whether financially or politically) move to the suburbs.
Same for whites. Many/most were locked away in perpetual poverty in rural areas.
No, our nation's history guarantees that economic segregation is racial segregation. These laws were literally designed to create racial segregation.
Saying, "we only like the economic segregation part now" doesn't change the outcome.
>Saying, "we only like the economic segregation part now" doesn't change the outcome.
Correlation does not imply causation. It's no secret that Asians (a historically disadvantaged POC) flock to the suburbs. They are de facto not barred from suburbs, meaning suburbs are de facto not racist.
You're pretending that explicit racism is the only form of racism. Modern zoning was invented precisely because the Supreme Court outlawed explicit racial zoning. It was designed to racially segregate and continues to do so.
Example: "More than 80% of America’s large metropolitan areas were more racially segregated in 2019 than they were in 1990" https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/28/us-racial-se...
"Correlation does not imply causation."
The history is well documented. Read Color of Law or for a shorter form: https://grist.org/cities/zoned-out-one-womans-half-century-f...
When the origin and outcome are both racist then policy itself is clearly racist.
I'm not pretending, racism is racism, you don't get to redefine what words mean in order to fit your narrative. Suburbs are de facto and de jure not racist.
>Modern zoning was invented precisely because the Supreme Court outlawed explicit racial zoning.
This is not entirely true. Zoning laws in LA and NYC predate explicit racial zoning, and survived past the 1917 Supreme Court ruling.
>It was designed to racially segregate and continues to do so.
Again, not entirely true, and definitely no longer true. Asians, Jews, Indians, Africans, etc. are all more likely to reside in suburban areas now, so they by definition do not "racially segregate and continues to do so".
>"More than 80% of America’s large metropolitan areas were more racially segregated in 2019 than they were in 1990" https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/28/us-racial-se...
Your link literally agrees with me: "Many of these policies were not designed to oppress."
>The history is well documented. Read Color of Law or for a shorter form: https://grist.org/cities/zoned-out-one-womans-half-century-f...
Poor opinion piece that conflates zoning and segregation laws, which is what many people have been doing because it's politically expedient.
>When the origin
Maybe, but not entirely.
>and outcome
Provably not so. Asians/Indians (a historically disadvantaged POC), Africans, etc. are all flooding to suburbs, which means they are de facto no longer racist, and do not have a racist outcome. QED.
I’m done arguing with a throwaway account if you’re going to be intentionally naive. “It’s not racist because it doesn’t specifically talk about race” is logical cowardice.
The rest of your comment is similarly tortured. That some POC succeed despite racism does not mean racism doesn’t exist.
Our city council only recently changed zoning to allow an increase from only 2!!! non-related adults living in the same place to 5. It's crazy to me that was ever a limit in the first place.
No 3 bed apartments for non-blood relatives?!
The old zoning that was fixed also made it harder and limited certain types of group homes, rehabs etc too, especially the number of and locations.
One of the filers of this repeal said the following in a press article - clear intent imho.
“This affects their very wealth. Their very wealth,” said George E. Mayl, one of the five voters who officially filed to create a referendum committee. “And not only that, their children’s, their heirs’ wealth. Someone’s home is their single largest investment of their life.”
also the way they use 'neighborhood' to me is not so veiled language in the context of race and class - just like the many policies and laws in the past. It's used as a rhetorical excuse just like 'protecting the kids' is often used.
Similarly like Trump & Reps in 2020 made 'protect the suburbs from' or 'border invasion' a key message.
There are another 2 housing measures on the ballot that are competing.
A big developer spent like $20 million or something to buy rights for a golf course in the city that they want to develop.
They bought it with a green space park easement... But to be profitable they have to repeal the easement so they can built over the park. They gambled on their power to change the law.
So they filed a measure to allow them to build more (to be fair they still plan on having a park, but less green space than currently protected in an easement).
So now there is a competing measure in response to protect the park.
I'm for it we don't have a ton of open green space in Denver and we can't build more. Let's change laws and remove red tape to build UP.
What happens if they both pass? who in the world will be able to decipher the two when voting?
And what does it say that corporations & white homeowners consistently and so plainly manipulate the law directly for their bottom line (oil and gas is a big one here)?
Another one on the ballot around homelessness. HUGE problem, we have tents in residential neighborhoods and lots of theft.
But it's pretending to address the problem while really making more laws and regulations to criminalize homelessness and disallow solutions.
They're so brave to invest in allowing homeless to sleep in parking lots lol...
While simultaneously making it harder to create group living and the rehab that a ton of homeless individuals would greatly benefit from.
Thankfully we do have some push by Rep. DeGette and a few others to buy old motels. That's a good investment and would actually help.
We really need to densify a lot, and do so quickly, and I am skeptical the market will get us the quick enough.
Zoning is bad, but don't forget all our good unplanned construction was also pre-auto. Looking at e.g. parts of Texas, I worry that the self-perpetuation dynamics of cars --- which are very strong --- will make a market-based transition away from low density too quite tenuous.
I have 0 problem saying in Core areas single family family homes have no place, and we should ban them outright. SFH zoning is bad because it causes land too be wasted, such that future generations have to pay the costs of redevelopment rather than building right on "unimproved" land. Conversely, "too much density", if there even is such a thing, would waste very little land, meaning that a mandated switch back to SFH suburbia would be cheap, just as it was 50+ years ago.
It's not hubris, it's learning from our mistakes.
SFH IS the best options, nobody WANTS to live in an apartment if given the choice.
There's so many positives to living in an apartment that are pretty much direct effects of the denser housing.