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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   27665 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 2024

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Well, no. Because what the pod people want is basically Kowloon Walled City surrounded by farmland. An urban growth boundary, inside of which there is only high density development, outside of which no one may build at all. So if the pod people have their way the McMansion people will be pushed until they hit the boundary and then they'll be forced into pods.

Per Wikipedia:

Notable U.S. cities surrounded by UGBs include Portland, Oregon; Boulder, Colorado; Honolulu, Hawaii; Virginia Beach, Virginia; Lexington, Kentucky; Seattle, Washington; Knoxville, Tennessee;[17] and San Jose, California.

None of those cities are notably famous for their YIMBY attitude to urban infill and densification - Portland, Seattle and Boulder are possibly the three most notoriously NIMBY cities outside California.

An urban growth boundary, inside of which there is only high density development, outside of which no one may build at all.

I don't claim to want this at all. An urban growth boundary would be a terrible thing. Letting people build on farmland they own is no different to letting people build on urban land they own. You wouldn't get the Kowloon Walled city, you'd get a smooth gradient of housing densities slowly decreasing from urban centres to rural locations.

A lot of the UK's current housing problems stem from the fact that people can't build on farmland they own.

An urban growth boundary would be a terrible thing. Letting people build on farmland they own is no different to letting people build on urban land they own.

Without this, how would you stop white people from moving out to the suburbs again?

Why would you want to stop this? White people should be just as free to decide where they want to live as anyone else.

Presumably to avoid a repeat of the 60's-80's

An urban growth boundary would be a terrible thing. Letting people build on farmland they own is no different to letting people build on urban land they own.

But the YIMBYs aren't pushing to let farmland be developed. They don't want greenfield development, they want to be able to densify existing neighborhoods.

You wouldn't get the Kowloon Walled city, you'd get a smooth gradient of housing densities slowly decreasing from urban centres to rural locations.

We have that in much of the United States. It's decried as "sprawl" by urbanists. They don't want that; they say it leads to car dependence, long commutes, ugly parking lots, pollution, high infrastructure costs, gun ownership, and general resistance to dependence on government. They want to preserve undeveloped or agricultural land from the predations of housing developers, while densifying existing cities and suburbs.

What do these dystopian sci-fi scenarios of yours have to do with modestly easing California's land use regulations? You constantly attack strawmen positions instead of actually arguing against the policies being proposed.

Because I wasn't born yesterday and I'm not narrowly focused on a particular set of proposals being made by some groups today -- and I don't believe others are either. As @zeke5123a points out, "there are a million ways to cut red tape besides allowing multiple family building in single family zones", but for some reason these organizations are ONLY focused on ways to increase density. Remove urban growth boundaries, agricultural set-asides, and other government blockades to development? No, it's all about jamming more people where single-family development already is.

And I've been hearing how horrible "sprawl" is from basically the same area of the political spectrum for decades. I do not believe the people organizing the YIMBYs have different goals than the New Urbanists and other anti-car anti-suburb leftists, only different tactics.

there are a million ways to cut red tape besides allowing multiple family building in single family zones", but for some reason these organizations are ONLY focused on ways to increase density.

Really? Here's California yimby's policy page.

https://cayimby.org/resources/policy-framework/chapter-1/

Here's the red tape they want to cut that's not just up zoning.

Create a state-level board of appeals for permitting.

Direct HCD to conduct a review of international building codes.

Direct HCD to create rules and guardrails around nexus studies.

Direct HCD to provide guidance on representative "community input" models.

Direct the Law Revision Commission to study existing housing law and provide recommendations for simplification.

Reform environmental review for housing.

Standardize the post-entitlement process statewide.

In fact it's most of them. And I certainly don't see anything about enforcing urban growth boundaries.

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