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Comment by DelaneyM | Hacker News Reader

Generally I agree, but unfortunately many newer, denser, cities can't be easily rezoned/rebuilt into residential/mixed use because the city infrastructure (usually plumbing) can't handle it. So major conversion projects need not only zoning approval but also major municipal investments.

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.)

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Every zoning wonk's favorite type of zoning, progressive zoning (i.e. "the kind of zoning Japan has") specifies residential as the "base" type of zone, that all other zones must also allow for. So there's "residential", "residential + commercial", "residential + commercial + light industrial", etc. I've never seen this explicitly stated, but I would assume that this means that all types of zoned land must have their public infrastructure done up to the standards required to build residences on them. (Not necessarily dense residences, but residences nevertheless.)

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?

>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.

This strikes me as the low hanging fruit when it comes to making cities more walkable.

It's interesting because the usual arguments against are that it will create too much traffic in a neighborhood, but if it is allowed everywhere, then no one would bother driving to a small corner market because there would already be one in walking distance.

I've only researched this superficially but I believe that in Los Angeles county and possibly California at large it's the case that commercial zones include multi-family residential uses, so a C4 is also effectively an R4. You can see that here. https://planning.lacity.org/odocument/eadcb225-a16b-4ce6-bc9...

Zoning is extremely arbitrary, especially at a neighborhood scale. You could easily get rid of it and just let the technical limitations fall where they may. They'll differ a lot between different places.

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.

There are a few problems, Zoning is probably the least of the problems in the sense that we could effectively waive a magic wand and solve it, but it is a political problem which makes it more difficult than it needs to be.

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.

> remove parking minimums city-wide

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.

Now in a post-covid(ish) world, taking back some parking real estate space would be quite beneficial for a lot of cities I imagine. Would it bite cities later on in years to come?

Removing parking minimums does not mean "do not build parking". It means "build what the market demands". If there's huge demand in the future, it'll get built.

Exactly. The problem we mostly face now is we're building just to build/demanding that parking is built just because and we haven't examined the underlying assumptions or reasons for why we're mandating parking. It's really predicated on the idea of a car-only infrastructure but as we work to repair our cities we have to question that assumption and provide alternative mobility options so that our infrastructure isn't super fragile.

Still, I would be in favor of parking maximums. Not in number of parking spaces, but a limit on total acreage that may be lost to car storage. In more dense parts of the world, we have rooftop parking or multi-storey car parks. A concrete desert just for parking is such a non-optimal solution, it should go away completely.

> converting actual office buildings is tricky

In large commercial buildings, too much of the floor space is too far from a window. This is why dead malls are so useless.

Dead malls have all sorts of problems.

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.

>because the city infrastructure (usually plumbing) can't handle it.

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?

I wondered the same thing. There's cities changing R1 to R3 or R4, and the infrastructure wasn't stopping them.

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.

> but unfortunately many newer, denser, cities can't be easily rezoned/rebuilt into residential/mixed use because the city infrastructure (usually plumbing) can't handle it.

It could still house some residential use, albeit very few large units. Wouldn't probably be profitable.

What's the alternative? Teardown and rebuild?

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