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Comment by bennysomething | Hacker News Reader

Best thing about living in older European cities is they don't have this stupid zoning, they mixed commercial and housing because that's how people chose to live before planners got invented after ww2. Now planners are patting themselves on the back for recently inventing the 20 minute community, Which is exactly the same thing. My one major thing I want in life is to never ever live in a suburban development with zero to do except drive to places.

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Urban planning is probably as old as cities. Based on my limited experience, European planners just focus more on actual planning than mere zoning.

When an area is being (re)developed, the planners try to figure out many of the details. How should be public transport and parking organized? Where are the walking and biking routes? Where should the parks and commercial spaces be? And so on. Older European cities are not as much organically grown as planned and replanned over centuries.

You might be right, but there was an interesting thing on BBC radio 4 s few years ago, an British architect who grew up in Lebanon explained that he thought the UK should bin it's planners completely as all that had been built post ww2 when that arm of government was created, was monstrosities or at best only allow the equivalent of music's James blunt records. Not great but at least boring and acceptible.

> before planners got invented after ww2.

I mean, I don't disagree on the overall point, but one could do with reading up on people like Haussmann: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges-Eug%C3%A8ne_Haussmann

You are very right. What I said was sort of incorrect. I'm referring to this in the UK:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_and_Country_Planning_Ac...

In particular it means that owning land does not automatically allow you to build on it.

Lack of zoning is one element of the equation but having developed before the car is pretty crucial too. Houston, TX has no zoning laws to speak of but because most of its growth happened in the last century, it grew outwards instead of upwards.

And I thought it's only software UI designers who like to watch the world burn.

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