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Comment by chmod600 | Hacker News Reader

I agree that local zoning is a problem, but I've seen a trend to try to turn it into the wild west. I'm not sure people building duplexes in R1 is really a solution. It seems like we need more medium density in commercial areas (e.g. four stories of apartments on top of one floor of commercial).

That could bring down rents and improve quality of life, and improve the suburbs as well. If you drive by a poorly-maintained house in the suburbs, that's probably someone who would live in medium density if it were available.

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There’s a housing emergency in most places people want to live. If society wanted to have moderate solutions, they should have tried these conservative solutions before crisis point.

It’s like saying pouring water on a house fire is too extreme, maybe try an ABC extinguisher instead. The time for half measures is long past. If NIMBY home owners don’t like that there’s an apartment in their neighborhood, they can choke.

The problem is that everyone has their own oppinion on the matter, and will block anyone from trying out any other opinion.

At some point, you just need to build. If some ideas don’t pan out… then people will move, investors will lose. At present, even in densely populated Boston, any type of housing will command a high rate.

I've heard the idea to zone for one level above the average in an area, to avoid the wild west situation. Doubtful that would fly with some very rich single family neighbourhoods near cities, but perhaps it's too late for the gradual re-zoning and a more blunt approach is necessary.

Aside... where the heck is tech in building housing faster? Where's the prefab and automated assembly? Too many building regulations? Entrenched interests? Incredibly hard problem for large scale engineering?

This sub stack has some great coverage of those questions:

https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/why-its-hard-to-i...

Here's a tech companies few I know of:

-www.botbuilt.com - (W21) -Canvas -Built -AutoVol -https://www.diamondage3d.com/ -Entekra -Promise Robotics -Icon -Rent my backyard (YC)

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