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> I just don't understand why cities in California won't let go of single unit zoning.

People like to live in single family homes and live next to single family homes.

> Ever visit a beautiful city like Paris, Copenhagen, Milan and wonder why we don't have that? It would be illegal to make the buildings they have under our zoning code and parking mandates!

You won't get a beautiful city like those with any kind of [realistic American] zoning. It's too expensive. You'd get flimsy modern cookie-cutter buildings and maybe some brutalist concrete hulks.

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>People like to live in single family homes and live next to single family homes.

Then those people should buy a single family home and the single family homes around them and keep them that way.

>You won't get a beautiful city like those with any kind of zoning. It's too expensive. You'd get flimsy modern cookie-cutter buildings and maybe some brutalist concrete hulks.

The current restrictions that have created suburbia are already yield expensive, cookie cutter and flimsy housing, so even if your arguments were taken at face value (Which I disagree with), nothing changes for the worse.

> The current restrictions that have created suburbia are already yield expensive, cookie cutter and flimsy housing, so even if your arguments were taken at face value (Which I disagree with), nothing changes for the worse.

I'm not disputing that. What I am disputing is denser housing would get us "a beautiful city like Paris, Copenhagen, Milan..." It's false advertising.

The only thing you'll get with density is density.

> Then those people should buy a single family home and the single family homes around them and keep them that way.

That's what we did. Now people like you are saying me and my neighbors are NIBMYs and want us to change.

>That's what we did. Now people like you are saying me and my neighbors are NIBMYs and want us to change.

You bought a single family home and all surrounding single family homes around it? If that's the case, no one is asking you to change anything. They're literally your backyards and you can choose to not build any further. If your neighbors don't want to build more units, they should be free not to as well.

What needs to change is neighbors restricting housing units on property they do not own. No one is advocating for completely abolishing all zoning, but the current approach isn't working as housing prices skyrocket everywhere that housing production can't keep up — often because of zoning restrictions.

> >People like to live in single family homes and live next to single family homes. > Then those people should buy a single family home and the single family homes around them and keep them that way.

And when they do (as an upstream commenter has done), they're attacked by the good people who blame single-family houses for what's wrong with California.

This thread is an example.

Ah yes, the famously laissez faire zoning policies in cities like Paris, Copenhagen, and Milan...

You don't get beautiful walkable cities if you let people just do whatever they want wherever they want. If you do that you get Houston Texas.

Agreed, if you look at Alameda, CA it is a town with many beautiful victorian homes. In the 70s and 80s they were tearing them down as fast as they could and building ugly apartment buildings in their place. Then they changed the laws so you couldn't tear down the old homes and now many of them are restored to their beautiful original state.

> People like to live in single family homes and live next to single family homes.

People like living in walkable neighborhoods with public transportation more, as proven by housing prices, but those are mostly illegal to build.

Also I think that society is now much more complex than the single family American dream of the past. And the US should wake up to the reality that in their society the poor are subsidizing the rich in almost everything, especially in housing.

>You won't get a beautiful city like those with any kind of zoning. It's too expensive. You'd get flimsy modern cookie-cutter buildings.

Are you claiming those cities don't have zoning?

> Are you claiming those cities don't have zoning?

I'm claiming modern construction isn't very beautiful. If you drop single family zoning for something denser, you're not going to get something like those beautiful cities that were cited above. It's false advertising to suggest that denser zoning would give us another Paris (at least not the parts people are referring to when they bring it up). You'd get McMansion Hell, 4-Plex Edition or The Concrete Hulks of Shanghai (e.g. https://aurelien-marechal.com/block#1).

I suppose you could have a zoning code that mandated "building them like they used to," but that would be too expensive.

There are many examples in the world of successful new city developments. I used to live near Java Island in Amsterdam, a newly developed neighborhood which is very densely populated (60.000 people per square mile) and quite popular. There are modern versions of traditional canal houses, which most people think look very nice. It is not inexpensive anymore, however.

I think in the US there are some comparable developments, where they also try building walkable neighborhoods with high density, having shops and restaurants mixed in. But that is still very rare in the US.

Ah, like that. Cities like Paris do still look like that because of such zoning laws, so it's not exactly impossible. IMO modern construction can be beautiful too, it's cheap (be it old or new) construction that's ugly.

It won't matter, apartments in Manhattan and London are not necessarily cheaper than single house in LA. Zoning is a way to make more property tax and will have nothing to do with low income affordable housing in the expensive area. It's the demand and supply, so long as there are enough wealth pour in the district the price will keep hiking.

Hint: wealth gap is your answer.

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