Hacker News Reader

Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

The categorical elimination of single-family zoning along with any building envelope restrictions that would make as-of-right 3-flats uneconomical.

View on HN

It's might actually be easier to win the economics battle by chipping away at restrictions on taller buildings. The builders in my area are copy/pasting a 3-flat design all over the place but it requires bargain-basement land prices (literally building on former toxic waste dumps) or money from the township because 3-flats make you have to build wide.

The muni I live in is very constrained (we're just 4 square miles, right on the border of the west side of Chicago) and our land is overwhelmingly SFZ, so most of the ballgame is getting SFZ lots opened up. The emerging consensus is towards "missing middle" housing, which is 2-40 units (but really, a medium term sweet spot in the teens), where you're talking about buildings spanning multiple lots.

That very little can economically be built on existing SFZ lots even with relaxed zoning is actually a feature, not a bug, for getting this done. People want change to be slow. At least to begin with, it's better strategically if it takes a couple years and gradual tweaking to make lots of building happen.

Kam Buckner is trying to get something passed at the state level (but wouldn't apply to Oak Park. https://ilga.gov/legislation/BillStatus.asp?DocNum=3288&GAID... )

Rather than the complete elimination of single family (and by extension even larger lots) I feel like it ought to follow something resembling an iterated 80/20 rule out to huge rural lots at the far end. Notice that this would imply a plurality of the land being zoned for the highest density at any given time.

The thing that really kills density in most cases is the height restrictions. A lot of the upzoning in my area has resulted in ugly, wall-to-wall low-single-digit floor count buildings with near zero setback. It's better than single family but it isn't particularly dense and it's a huge step backwards aesthetically.

A step in the right direction last week for the largest upzoning effort in the city! https://archive.is/QuOcJ

Of course the a vocal minority is fuming about higher density.

That would be an outstanding outcome! Is this just for Oak Park, or beyond?

You'd hope that Oak Park, Evanston, Wilmette, and then Berwyn and Schaumburg could get this done, and then your next step would be either Chicago (tough because of aldermanic structure) or statewide, the way California did. Either way: you start in one municipality and work from there.

It helps that zoning matters more in Oak Park (and Evanston) than almost anywhere else in Chicagoland.

Why does zoning matter more in Oak Park and Evanston? High demand from being on the El and close to Chicago?

Yep. Historically both of these places basically exist to concentrate the interests of the upper middle class and to reinforce segregation. They're both basically Chicago but with a better funded school system (because lawyers and doctors get to funnel all their property taxes into the school down the street from them), which makes them highly desirable.

There is no way you get Wilmette to change zoning. They've fought with Small Cheval about the size of their sign for like 9 months. I doubt you'd get any village in the NT district to rezone - the Optima project was pulling teeth, everyone is worried about overcrowding NT, which as a single HS is pretty packed now

The whole project is going to take many years. Even if we fix Oak Park zoning in the coming year, it'll still be years before anything significant gets built, and years past that for us to serve as a test case.

New Trier can just build another campus like they did for freshmen.

Where exactly? Land on the north shore isn’t empty nor is it cheap.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com