How does mandatory single family zoning and parking minimums factor into your "feature?" When people want to live somewhere dense, and that's illegal to build, they're forced into suburban living even though that is not their preference.
> When people want to live somewhere dense, and that's illegal to build
It's not illegal to build everywhere. That should be obvious since there are lots of dense urban areas.
I could just as easily ask why I'm not allowed to build a new single family home in Manhattan. The obvious answer is that Manhattan is not a suburb. The equally obvious answer to why you can't build dense urban housing in a suburb is that it's not a city. Unless you are arguing that everywhere should be a dense urban area, there are going to be different areas with different densities and different kinds of housing. That's just a fact of life that everyone has to deal with.
You can in fact build a new single family home in Manhattan, if you can afford the land to do so.
Meanwhile, regardless of land price, dense housing is illegal to build pretty much everywhere that is not currently dense, due to zoning laws. Why shouldn't someone be able to build dense housing in a suburb?
What it sounds like you advocate for is that everywhere currently dense can stay dense, and everywhere not currently dense must stay not dense. That doesn't make sense unless you want the dense area to continue to skyrocket in price as more people want to live there and we have no new housing to accommodate them.
> You can in fact build a new single family home in Manhattan, if you can afford the land to do so.
Really? Where? Note that I don't mean a townhome or a row house, I mean literally a detached single family home.
> What it sounds like you advocate for is that everywhere currently dense can stay dense, and everywhere not currently dense must stay not dense.
Obviously this won't be the case long term; areas will evolve. Some will become more dense, some will become less dense.
What I am saying is that people have a wide variety of preferences, and that is just a fact of life. Talking as if one particular way of living is "better" does not recognize that.
> That doesn't make sense unless you want the dense area to continue to skyrocket in price as more people want to live there and we have no new housing to accommodate them.
Why would there be no new housing in urban areas? New construction is going on in cities all the time.
People who want to live somewhere “dense” can go live there. The dense parts of most cities don’t have mandatory single zoning or parking minimums as far as I know. I’m not going to stop you from living in or near downtown and neither is anyone else in the suburbs. You do you and let the rest of us do us.
Except for price, because a lot of people want to live in dense areas.
Why exactly do you think you should have a say over how other people live? That's what you claim to oppose, but your support of zoning in order to prevent other people from building density on their own property is exactly that.
> Except for price, because a lot of people want to live in dense areas.
And the way to fix that is for urban areas to allow for more construction of living space. Which, historically, urban areas are very bad at doing, for example by restricting the maximum height of buildings. But how is that the suburbs' fault?
> Why exactly do you think you should have a say over how other people live?
I have said no such thing. I have never said there should not be urban areas. Indeed, I have explicitly said that there should be areas of all different kinds, urban, suburban, and rural, so that everyone's different preferences can be accommodated somewhere. You are the one who keeps talking as if everywhere should be dense urban areas.
> your support of zoning in order to prevent other people from building density on their own property is exactly that.
So you think I should be able to build a single family home in the middle of Manhattan, provided I can buy the land?
Zoning is much more of an issue in urban areas, and in fact, as I noted above, is one of the main reasons why urban housing is overly expensive.
You have explicitly said other people in your suburb should not be able to build dense housing on their property. Why?
And if there are many people who want urban areas and not enough housing to accommodate, would you support expanding them, or is this an attack on your preferences?
> You have explicitly said other people in your suburb should not be able to build dense housing on their property.
I have said no such thing. I have said that in a suburb, most people won't want to do that. But that doesn't mean nobody will. In every suburb I've lived in, there has been a mix of single family homes, townhomes, and apartments. Some suburbs are even evolving to the point where they have a core area that is basically urban, with almost all buildings being high rise. I have already said that such things are to be expected over time.
> if there are many people who want urban areas and not enough housing to accommodate, would you support expanding them
If the urban area is already fully built out, and it acquires the additional land legally on the open market, sure.
But much so-called "urban" area is nowhere near fully built out. For example, much of the city of San Francisco is still fairly low density, with little or no high rise and many lots still being single family homes, and is kept that way by restrictive zoning, even though there are multitudes of people clamoring to live there. Before expanding the city out into the suburbs, I would say the city should first allow more people to live in the land that is already part of the city, and adjust its zoning to make that possible.
The whole point I'm making is that many suburbs are zoned by law to be exclusively single family. That's a problem. Expanding that zoning doesn't mandate density, but it will allow it where it is currently banned.
