- cannot block views for other buildings (eg, a "spite house")
- "right to light" laws like in England and Japan, or more generally restrictions on preventing sky exposure (eg, the 1916 Zoning Resolution in New York).
- protection of historical or archaeological sites, wildlife, landscape, etc.
- must build with enough basic services for the residents, eg, ensure there is enough long-term access to water for new housing in Arizona, that sufficient transport is available,
There are some places where I would want prohibition on housing construction, like in risky flood zones or near certain industrial plants.
Paris uses its zoning abilities "to concentrate high density office buildings in the district of La Défense rather than allow heritage buildings across the city to be demolished to make way for them", though that's not concerning housing. They've also prohibited buildings over seven stories high in the city center, which prohibits unlimited housing in that area. (Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoning .)
Those seem like good reasons to not rezone all private land to allow unlimited housing construction.
Instead, the discussions I've seen start with abolishing single-family-only housing zones, as has been done in various places, rather than abolish all housing zoning restrictions.
See also the previous, sometimes heated, zoning stories on HN, at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Do you mean that it's just a label? Can a house be zoned to be a wetland, without changing the house itself?
In any case, I think the intent of the question is more equivalent to "allow boarding houses in all residential zoning" not "require".
Not sure why you keep mentioning require, I never said that to begin with.
The first one sounds like a require, the second sounds like an optional.
Like, "rezone all houses to be agricultural" would be a very different than "rezone to allow agricultural use."
That link you pointed to wants to prohibit group living arrangements ("the loopholes [that permit group living arrangements] are still there. A few simple amendments can, by eliminating the loopholes, insure effective zoning"). It's absolutely does not want to rezone to allow boarding houses in R-1 single-family zones.