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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   37969 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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YIMBY sentiment on this forum has (I think) been mostly focused on increasing the density of existing residential zones. However, it may be worth noting that there is an alternative: converting existing agricultural or unused land to low-density residential use (i. e., continuing to "sprawl"). In this article, a former employee of the libertarian Cato Institute accuses that organization of focusing exclusively on high-density housing, and of smearing as racist people who are not interested in long-term high-density living and clamor for more single-family houses. (In his view, upzoning imposed from the top down is not libertarian, because the existing owners have a sort of property right in the zoning of their neighborhood as a substitute for deed restrictions that could or should have been used instead of zoning codes.)

Another issue with increased density: does it actually help affordability long term? That is the reason we want density, right? When you add lanes to a highway, traffic gets better. For a while. Then people get used to the light traffic and change where they live (i.e., further away from town). Then traffic gets bad again. Who's to say that NYC will always be "unaffordable" no matter how dense it is? What if there's no bottom to the demand to live in NYC? What then?

So when you add lanes, more people get to live where they want to live. Isn’t it great?

Except, of course, the ones who were evicted to have their homes razed to build those lanes.

The evictions are just one of the many negative externalities imposed by the construction of huge roads. Some others are pollution (local and global), obesity (from people using their cars instead of walking or cycling) and infrastructure that the suburbs can't afford and need subsidies for.

At some point the harm from the externalities starts to outweigh the benefit of people living "where they want to live" – in scare quotes because where people want to live is dependent on what's on offer, and if the only available form of housing is sprawling lifeless suburbs criss-crossed by lifeless eight-lane highways, then that's where people will want to live. I assume you're not suggesting that, if higher density housing were built closer to the centres of cities, it would stay empty. That would clearly be absurd.

Except, of course, the ones who were evicted to have their homes razed to build those lanes.

First, this is not something that routinely happens for traffic mitigation projects. Second, people who get eminent domained are compensated for this, typically more than their house is actually worth. Third, this is just as much of an argument against densification, upzoning, and public transit: those also displace people.

infrastructure that the suburbs can't afford and need subsidies for.

Somehow I knew without clicking that this will be a link to Strongtowns. I knew it, because nobody else is making this argument, and this is because their entire argument is completely bogus. I wrote about it years ago, see also this more detailed one.

Here's one more reason why it's entirely wrong: observe that every year, dozens of new master planned communities crop up. The development of these is basically entirely funded by the sale of the properties. The developers can't just come to some adjacent or local government and ask them to just build roads, water mains, electricity lines etc. This is not paid for by "someone else", it's the homeowners themselves who cover all of this cost, when they initially buy their new construction houses, and then later when they pay property taxes and/or HOA fees. Local governments do not build stuff for the developers, typically they actually ask developers to pay extra taxes and fees, labelled as "impact fees" and such.

At some point the harm from the externalities starts to outweigh the benefit of people living "where they want to live"

What externalities, exactly? On whom they fall? Where is the assessment that honestly tries to measure these, balance positive vs negative externalities, and compares to the balance of externalities of any alternatives? I've never seen anything of this sort, at best I see tendentious, motivated reasoning of the StrongTowns variety, one sided assessments that only calculate costs, do little to actually determine who pays these costs, and does not even attempt to assess the benefits.

Haha! Sure. But now traffic is bad again. Should we add a couple more lanes? Do we add homes until we observe demand decrease?

Note: I'm generally in favor of the goals here. I'd love to have my own place in Manhattan for under a thousand bucks per month. Wouldn't need to be nice either. Shared bathroom? Sure. I just want it to be clean and safe. How much does that have to do, really, with building... how much are we talking here, twice the amount of homes in NYC we have now? I honestly don't know.

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