It turns out zoning is not just an arbitrary categorization, but also a guidance for public works. This is a tough trap, because it's hard to convince a local gov to put up much more capacity than required for office use when an office building goes in (that would be a waste of taxpayer funds).
(I've tried to do this, even put up capital and hired an architect, but it hit this wall.)
However, that aside, I don't think the GP is suggesting rezoning office towers in a downtown core such that they get torn down and replaced with equally-dense condo towers. I think the much more common use-case that everyone wants to see, is taking the land on which sits e.g. an abandoned mall, or a disused business park, or something else that's not already surrounded by hard-to-work-around density; rezoning that land to mixed-use commercial+residential; and then selling the land to a property developer (who then incurs the costs of infrastructure building) to blow it away and replace it with a "village" of midrises + shopping laid out for walkability.
Or, alternately, we can approach things from the other angle: upzone light SFH-only residential, into mixed-use medium-density residential + commercial. I.e. tell property developers that they're free to buy up stretches of homes and plop down 5+1 apartment buildings with shops on the ground floor; and also allow anyone living in a home in the area to run a corner store, bistro, dance studio, hair salon, or other (non-industrial) businesses they like out of their house, with no need to apply for a zoning permit.
In short: why try to cram more people into downtown, when you can instead spread out the benefits of living downtown?
This strikes me as the low hanging fruit when it comes to making cities more walkable.
Also newer cities in the US tend to not be denser. Because of zoning.
I've read that converting actual office buildings is tricky and often not worth it outside of all but the most expensive housing markets, but that's different from liberalizing the zoning regime.
In large commercial buildings, too much of the floor space is too far from a window. This is why dead malls are so useless.
The buildings are usually often old and cheaply constructed and would probably largely need to be gutted which is probably not worth it.
But even if you contemplate just building from scratch, if a mall is dead it's probably because it's located somewhere there isn't a ton of demand. That's certainly the case with the one near me.
One reservation I have is what zoning we get rid of and where. Many cities such as Columbus where I live have fantastic, medium-density neighborhoods that we really shouldn't touch. On the other hand the downtown area is full of surface parking lots that are not only empty most of the time in the evenings but post-COVID empty most of the time all of the time. Something I'd advocate for in a 1-2 punch would be to remove parking minimums city-wide but also to remove zoning restrictions in the downtown core first to create density there where we lack it before we try and remove it in our neighborhoods that we know are good and appropriately dense to start with.
Most of the density/zoning problems as they relate to neighborhoods exist in the suburbs, not cities.
You're right about the office renovation though too. That's an issue. Thankfully those buildings are owned by someone who, frankly, has to spend the money to do something useful with them. We should make/let them solve their own problem there because whatever they solve for will be good for downtown cores.
Unfortunately zoning is going to become a political nightmare. Already state governments in locations such as Ohio where I live are now working to block cities from slowing down traffic or providing alternate means of transportation options instead of the car-only (the government says you aren't allowed to do anything but drive a car) infrastructure we pay for now.
We just did that here in Bend, Oregon as part of a statewide push to have more climate friendly cities. It's a great, easy, very incrementalist and market-based reform that everyone should do.
Are you sure this is true? Water distribution is usually constrained to minimums required for the fire suppression loads and duration. Typically, as far as I know the NFPA 1 standard is based on the construction type based on materials and design defined IBC chapter 6, and square footage, not on use or occupancy classifications.
Now the BUILDING plumbing would be a different story entirely. That would change dramatically from offices to commercial/residential uses.
But, you said city infrastructure, so I'm curious what wall you ran into exactly?
On the other hand it might necessitate upgrades if all R1 units are converted to R3, but then you have three times more taxpayers per mile to pay for that infrastructure.
It could still house some residential use, albeit very few large units. Wouldn't probably be profitable.
What's the alternative? Teardown and rebuild?
In most of the developed world stuff like this often ends up the east side of town, because in the northern hemisphere prevailing winds usually come from the west. Poor people often end up on the east side of towns for the same reason.
Good book for the curious: https://islandpress.org/books/arbitrary-lines
So instead of specifically limiting heavy truck access on a given street, it tries to limit the type of buildings.
Much of zoning could be fixed by directly aiming at the problems instead of just saying "only single family homes are permitted here".
That's one of many reasons that a lot of the better reforms we're seeing are at the state level, where it's easier to do the right thing and where politicians are less beholden to a few local loudmouths.
Economic segregation is really a different issue, and it is not something you are going to fix with legislation. The people with money will always be able to live someplace acceptable to them. A government can force most entities to be non-racist through various laws and actions. But you really cannot force someone to live next to an area they do not desire.
You could get rid of that zoning that enables wealthy people to say 'no' to other types of housing. Sure, they can always buy up a big lot somewhere far away - fine, whatever. But where cities are growing, that kind of discrimination embedded in the local zoning code is not ok.
And you can legislate it away - Oregon was the first state to do so with HB2001, which re-legalizes up to 4-plexes in all our cities. In any neighborhood. A 4-plex in a posh neighborhood is still not going to be cheap, but it allows more integration than if it weren't legal to build at all.
This is different than thinking there is going to be a large number of upper income single family housing units that would find living next to a Section 8 kind of development desirable.
I know people who grew up in "affordable housing", and put in significant effort to get away from that kind of neighborhood, and would not want to live near one.
This is a real challenge, and it can't be legislated away, the fix (IMO) is far deeper than zoning changes.
How do you square that with the fact that racial minorities are significantly poorer on average?
> it involves excluding a person based on something out of their control
Are you implying that people choose to be poor?
Most people don't want homelessness, "gangs"/crime , and rundown houses and other unsightly signs (perceived or real) of the economic lower-class in their neighborhood, a smaller subset don't want their children to socialize with the lower-class children, and a smaller subset truly want a private enclave of elitism.
To be frank, there is a benefit to live near lower-income people: its easier to find service workers for your local cafe/restaurant/etc. The affordability problem facing many cities is that there are too few service workers because not enough people can afford to go to the city and work (because commuting from affordable areas isn't worth it). A city with a varied population can support more local businesses, and can have a more varied local economy, and can even be more resilient - eg. if there is a big storm, but the town has no plumbers, electricians, etc, you may need to pay more to "import" that workers from doing jobs in their own town (which also likely has residents in need of work). If you are a millionaire, you can pay to import service work, but most middle-class people can't.
As in, keeping industry apart from other uses is a good thing the current zoning system does. But we should loosen restrictions elsewhere: offices, housing, commercial, and light industrial should be mixed more, which is forbidden under current laws.
I tend to agree. I live in a city where the downtown dies after 6pm, and it's a real shame knowing what it could be.
That really varies quite a lot. My town has a lot of mixed use zones. But a few towns over, they only have the usual variations of residential, employment, commercial, along with a few niche zones (university, open space, county government, etc).
They probably would need to expand, though.
Except in my town, as is fairly common, an incremental student costs more than the contribution from local property taxes and the state. So the fairly rural town of about 7,000 generally resists any plans that would markedly increase the number of students in the town.
So presumably adding more students and families is what makes it affordable. Why does that stop? What's the inflexion point?
It's not that a few students more or less is an issue but if there were a big new development with a lot of families with school-age children that would likely be a problem for the town.
Where demand falls: decommission or repurpose the schools.