This is interesting although a couple things raised questions for me.
One, I am not convinced by the arguments like "modernist architecture didn't become popular until after zoning". I do not think that people in Chicago were making decisions based on zoning in Boston. For this argument to work, I would need to see more specific evidence that for each of a number of cities, downzoning in an individual city took place before modern architecture began to make inroads in that city. Also, ideally this would not be about "modern" architecture but just about "buildings that people thought were ugly".
Second, the article makes several references to how lots of buildings were torn down and replaced throughout history, but we only see opposition to it more recently. An obvious explanation for this is that it is only relatively recently that democratic decision-making (including at the city level) became widespread and entrenched enough that individual citizens could influence such matters at all. Until relatively recently large-scale development was often a matter of backroom negotiations between politicians and wealthy developers who ran roughshod over the wishes of ordinary folks. The NIMBY movement can be seen in part as a reaction to this.
I skimmed three articles of this publication: one saying the more permittent zoning policies on historic urban areas would allow more growth and more environmentally sustainable buildings; other saying Europe is falling behind its auto-manufacturing and does not have its own Tesla, because they cannot kick out workers fast enough; third that Australia stopped asylum seeker by simply preventing boats coming in (and breaking international law?) and eu should do the same. So basically all of them are just lib news media feel-good “progressive yay!” style used to sell conservative capitalist ideas. Destroy historic urban centres so we can make money building dystopian hellholes, kick out the workers and smash the unions so we can pay ourselves bigger dividends and stop the asylum seekers escaping the horrid conditions of ex-colonial nations we created over centuries regardless of whether they deserve an asylum or not.
Here’s my pitch for an article: “Why You Not Using Your Democratic Power And Letting The Billionaires Decide On Everything Is Good, Actually”. How much do they pay per sentence?
Most new single home construction in Germany is in the form of cubes with flat roofs, absolutely ugly and will look like crap in 30-50 years (for me it looks like crap now already), see e.g. [1]. Insanity but for the builder it makes sense as it’s the cheapest way to conform to the energy saving requirements and maximize living room per lot size which is restricted due to idiotic zoning laws. I don’t get how this can be considered sustainable… And each of these houses costs more than 1 MM EUR.
> And each of these houses costs more than 1 MM EUR.
That's the other big problem with restrictive zoning laws (other than ugliness). It leads to unaffordable housing. By saying that a house must conform with X, Y, and Z you're essentially saying "anyone who doesn't have enough money to pay for X, Y, and Z can't buy a house".
Sometimes restrictions are necessary (e.g. safety rules). Other times they sound good on paper but just end up being elitist (e.g. house must have X number of parking spaces, Y minimum size for rooms, Z minimum outdoor space). Yes, those things are nice to have. But we shouldn't price out people who can't afford them. It's better that someone starting out in life be able to buy a house with smaller rooms, than not be able to buy anything at all. We've become so obsessed with raising standards across the board that we've forgotten that the people we exclude from those standards end up with worse standards.
Also, not everyone has the same priorities. Some people might like their bedroom to be huge. Others might just see it as a place to sleep and would rather spend their money on living in a good location, or some other priority. Restrictive zoning laws remove options by making buildings converge on a limited range of designs.
did that really happen to Innsbruck?
This is interesting although a couple things raised questions for me.
One, I am not convinced by the arguments like "modernist architecture didn't become popular until after zoning". I do not think that people in Chicago were making decisions based on zoning in Boston. For this argument to work, I would need to see more specific evidence that for each of a number of cities, downzoning in an individual city took place before modern architecture began to make inroads in that city. Also, ideally this would not be about "modern" architecture but just about "buildings that people thought were ugly".
Second, the article makes several references to how lots of buildings were torn down and replaced throughout history, but we only see opposition to it more recently. An obvious explanation for this is that it is only relatively recently that democratic decision-making (including at the city level) became widespread and entrenched enough that individual citizens could influence such matters at all. Until relatively recently large-scale development was often a matter of backroom negotiations between politicians and wealthy developers who ran roughshod over the wishes of ordinary folks. The NIMBY movement can be seen in part as a reaction to this.
I skimmed three articles of this publication: one saying the more permittent zoning policies on historic urban areas would allow more growth and more environmentally sustainable buildings; other saying Europe is falling behind its auto-manufacturing and does not have its own Tesla, because they cannot kick out workers fast enough; third that Australia stopped asylum seeker by simply preventing boats coming in (and breaking international law?) and eu should do the same. So basically all of them are just lib news media feel-good “progressive yay!” style used to sell conservative capitalist ideas. Destroy historic urban centres so we can make money building dystopian hellholes, kick out the workers and smash the unions so we can pay ourselves bigger dividends and stop the asylum seekers escaping the horrid conditions of ex-colonial nations we created over centuries regardless of whether they deserve an asylum or not.
Here’s my pitch for an article: “Why You Not Using Your Democratic Power And Letting The Billionaires Decide On Everything Is Good, Actually”. How much do they pay per sentence?
Most new single home construction in Germany is in the form of cubes with flat roofs, absolutely ugly and will look like crap in 30-50 years (for me it looks like crap now already), see e.g. [1]. Insanity but for the builder it makes sense as it’s the cheapest way to conform to the energy saving requirements and maximize living room per lot size which is restricted due to idiotic zoning laws. I don’t get how this can be considered sustainable… And each of these houses costs more than 1 MM EUR.
1: https://www.immobilienscout24.de/expose/169220882?referrer=H...
> And each of these houses costs more than 1 MM EUR.
That's the other big problem with restrictive zoning laws (other than ugliness). It leads to unaffordable housing. By saying that a house must conform with X, Y, and Z you're essentially saying "anyone who doesn't have enough money to pay for X, Y, and Z can't buy a house".
Sometimes restrictions are necessary (e.g. safety rules). Other times they sound good on paper but just end up being elitist (e.g. house must have X number of parking spaces, Y minimum size for rooms, Z minimum outdoor space). Yes, those things are nice to have. But we shouldn't price out people who can't afford them. It's better that someone starting out in life be able to buy a house with smaller rooms, than not be able to buy anything at all. We've become so obsessed with raising standards across the board that we've forgotten that the people we exclude from those standards end up with worse standards.
Also, not everyone has the same priorities. Some people might like their bedroom to be huge. Others might just see it as a place to sleep and would rather spend their money on living in a good location, or some other priority. Restrictive zoning laws remove options by making buildings converge on a limited range of designs.
Aren't flat roofs at strongly increased risk of leakage? And need to be sealed very, very carefully?
More than just looking crap in 30 years (agreed they do now) I worry, what about massive renovation required in 15 years?
And that is an insane cost for a small, ugly building.