Urban K. Choze

> "wealthier people tend to live together more than before and so do poorer people"

Some people are essentially told to contribute to this phenomenon when you buy a house in the US. High home values mean good school funding, which means homes will hold their value over time, pricing out people of different incomes. Buy the cheapest house you can in the most expensive neighborhood you can afford for the best return (with the caveat that mixed use zoning is rare).

If had a Japanese zoning model,[0] decoupled school funding from local incomes,[1] and ended or capped the mortgage interest deduction, a lot of this would go away.

None of those are trivial changes without entrenched interests though.

[0] http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html

[1] I've heard some states do this already. Oregon maybe? I know economic mobility varies a lot based on where you are in the US. http://www.npr.org/2014/01/23/265356290/study-upward-mobility-no-tougher-in-u-s-than-two-decades-ago
Would be interesting to cross compare that with some of these policies, see how much they matter. Maybe the effects of redlining can't just be papered over so quickly.

Heh, not to be the guy posting urbankchoze links all day but the author has thoughts on this as well actually[0].

The whole article is a good read but the thing that feels most pertinent is the idea of dynamic zoning; instead of zoning an area for single family residential you'd essentially zone areas such that new construction rules would be:

- allowed_height = max(2, ceil(avg_area_height * 1.5))

- allowed_occupancy = ceil(avg_area_occupancy * 1.5)

And then without the need for zoning exemptions and political zoning fights, you let neighborhoods up zone themselves organically based on demand. Average building two stories? You can build a three story low rise. Average height three stories? You can build a five story replacement.

I think lowering the barriers to higher density in-fill would effectively accomplish what you're aiming for while side stepping some of the political issues you've foreseen with raising taxes on people until they're forced to leave their homes.

[0]: http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/05/how-to-make-urban-housing-more_7.html?m=1

I'm not sure this is true. I know of several communities without strong regulations on what can be built (beyond perhaps size limits), and they tend to be pretty interesting. They also tend to develop their own individual character, due either to engineering limitations or social mimesis.

For example, Japanese houses are pretty disposable, but you can build more or less anything you like. (Here's a great article on it. https://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html ) If you combine this with the fact that Japanese depreciation rules promote 30-year disposable housing, you get a lot of very interesting homes. The result is that a ridiculous fraction of the interesting houses you see on archdaily are Japanese.

Or if you look at modern wealthy residential areas in north Delhi, you get a lot of interesting buildings. The neighborhoods again have their own unique character; it's a lot more heterogeneous than typical US suburbs, but it's clearly got it's own character. I can't find many pictures online, but I'll try to take a few next time I go.

> No amount of justification can uphold such federal zoning legislation.

Housing is interstate commerce, and the federal government has overruled local zoning rules in the past (satellite dishes in Chicago of all things). It appears to be quite legal, constitutional and precedented.

> Moving zoning responsibilities up the chain of command won't fix this, unless your plan is to send in the National Guard. We need to fix the broken relationship between state and city. I don't understand where federal government comes into this.

The ideal law would be similar to Japan's model: the federal government says housing is permitted in all zones and sets some consistent rules about what you can build and where. This framework would remove the silly arbitrary rules set up by councils to preclude reasonable land use in lieu of clear, consistent federal rules. Federal government sets the framework, municipalities execute.

Worth a read if you're curious what I'd like to see. [1]

[1] http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html

Tokyo is a good case study for how effective selective deregulation and zoning policy can lead to more efficient housing construction.

In Minato ward — a desirable 20 sq km slice of central
Tokyo — the population is up 66 per cent over the past 20
years, from 145,000 to 241,000, an increase of about
100,000 residents. In the 121 sq km of San Francisco, the
population grew by about the same number over 20 years,
from 746,000 to 865,000 — a rise of 16 per cent. Yet
whereas the price of a home in San Francisco and London
has increased 231 per cent and 441 per cent respectively,
Minato ward has absorbed its population boom with price
rises of just 45 per cent.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottbeyer/2016/08/12/tokyos-affordable-housing-strategy-build-build-build

It also helps that Japan has a brilliant zoning system:

http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html

"But small-scaled urban spaces and a culture of walking and transit use also foster safety and, perhaps just as important, the perception of safety."

I thought of this while I was watching the video. Japanese suburban fabric is much more compact, fine grain, mixed-use and more spatially coherent than North American equivelents. These contribute to the'eyes on a street'[1] condition in which neighborhood stores and residences look out onto public streets and reinforce communal saftey. The cul-de-sacs and degenerate grids of North American suburbs not only make walking incredibly inefficient[2], but also increase the isolation and community-orientation of the streets.

[1] Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
[2] http://urbankchoze.blogspot.ca/2014/10/bad-habits-of-north-american-cities_9.html