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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024

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Houston has no zoning. In practice, it has some rules. But the lack of formal zoning limits how stringent it can be- and it comes at a cost. Unlike other cities, where there's a 'ghetto', separated from 'a decent neighborhood' by industrial zones or housing for salt of the earth types, and functionally all the crime is in the former, Houston makes up for its relatively cheap housing with evenly spread crime throughout the entire city, rather than concentrating it all in one district.

There's tradeoffs everywhere. Zoning doesn't exist primarily to screw young people- concentrating low-income housing in one spot has benefits.

Unlike other cities, where there's a 'ghetto', separated from 'a decent neighborhood' by industrial zones or housing for salt of the earth types, and functionally all the crime is in the former,

There's plenty of cities where the ghetto is separated from decent neighborhoods by perhaps one city block or even less. Crucially, you can't ensure that an area becomes a ghetto by building an apartment there, and you can't guarantee an area is high income by zoning it for SFH. There's plenty of single family crack houses in Detroit on sale for about tree fiddy.