Posted on 04/20/2013 1:49:03 PM PDT by Twotone
"If you really believe that suburbs are going to die, then let them die, and let the market address the situation" says Joel Kotkin, Chapman University professor and urban planning specialist.
But letting the market work is far from ideal for California's regional planners and local politicians, who want almost 70 percent of new housing over the next 25 years to be multi-unit apartment-style dwelliings, despite the facts that more than half of Southern California households reside in a single-family home and that more people are leaving California than are coming in.
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
Does this guy ever have the Obama talking points down! :)
It is not the market that will determine the type of housing built. It is also not planners. Local elected officials getting campaign contributions will determine the bad plans and local officials that are not corrupt will approve the well planned developments.
LET THE FREE MARKET WORK !
If developers believe there is a market for more dense urban living, let them build it and make money from it (and let buyers buy what they want). If they are wrong, let them LOSE MONEY and go out of business
WTF is so hard about this? It’s the free market. Look it up and read about it.
I just don’t understand how CONSERVATIVES cannot understand this.
So tired of this.
They can’t do that if we don’t let them have control through zoning laws.
I understand more Americans are moving out of CA than moving in. But is this statement true when you factor in legal and illegal immigration?
Actually, this POV goes all the way back to the Progressives of the late 19th century. It's based on the idea that simple pre-industrial economies can function based on the free market, but more complex economies and societies require management by experts.
The problem, of course, is that the reverse is true. A feudal lord can run a manorial economy, or a planter a slave plantation, on a command basis with some efficiency. Stalin did indeed produce great economic advance, although with even greater suffering.
But an economy beyond the relatively simple heavy industry level simply cannot be managed on a command basis. The more complex it gets the less possible it becomes.
This is why recent financial meltdowns and bubbles are caused primarily not be failures of the market but by failures of regulation. If the government weren't in it, the market would be self-regulating. Pit the smart guys against each other.
Put the government into the mix and it's the brilliant private sector manipulators against underpaid government salaried guys. Who do you think will win such a battle of wits?
Thanks, that was a cogent and helpful analysis.
Agenda 21.
Zoning laws haven’t made a particle of difference here in Los Angeles. Our Betters in the City Council and the Mayor’s office simply waive every restriction for anyone who will build the kind of East Coast-model housing our Betters want built.
I live way out in the San Fernando Valley in an LA suburb. A hundred years ago it was orange orchards. Fifty years ago it was single-family homes.
We live here because average people can buy houses. Because we don’t have to live all stacked up like rats in cages. Like in New York. Not to be too obvious, but we don’t want to live like that.
Yet our Betters have decided to build thousands and thousands of teensy apartments with no parking five miles from my house. They’re not open yet, but soon. The scale is jaw dropping. Oh, but it’s “smart housing,” because it’s near the Orange Line, which is a dedicated busway. And is already running at peak capacity.
And this “smart housing” Soviet style collectivism is going on all over the city.
We’re going to give up our cars and houses and live the way they want us to live, whether we like it or not.
Zoning is government telling property owners what to do with their property.
That’s wrong whether they are dictating suburbs or dense urban housing. Either way it’s government getting in the way.
What is so hard to understand about this?
Live where you want and let others do the same. Let the free market work.
Can you say zone text amendment?
To what end?
Whatever the zoning is (whether its mandating some form of development you agree with or some form you don’t agree with) it is telling property owners what they can and cannot do with their property which is not free market.
I cannot understand why so many people (as evidenced by many discussion on the subject hear at FR and other conservative sites) cannot grasp this.
Zoning is ANTI FREE MARKET. If you support it as an ends to justify some means, then you cannot unhypocritically complain when other people do the same.
Total free market would be to allow a 10 story apartment building - for example - to be plopped in the middle of neighborhood of detached single family homes.
Maybe I miss your point. Happy to have clarification.
Yes, that would be total free market.
If you don’t want a 10 story apt bldg plopped down next to your single family house, then buy the property next door.
That is free market.
The other option is to support zoning and central planning of development and try through the democratic process to sway the decisions to the type of development you want to see next door. But if you do that, then you have to accept that others may also sway the decisions to a type of development you may not like.
It’s hypocritical to not admit that this is the case. Zoning is a government process and it is subject to the whims of the democratic vote and/or corruption of the officials that run zoning. Everyone overlooks this when things are going the way they want them to go (for example when zoning is setting minimum lot sizes, minimum house sizes, only allowing single family homes, etc) but they they cry havoc when things do not go their way ... (high rise apartments, etc.)
You can’t have it both ways. If you support zoning and central planning as a process for setting development patterns that you like and approve of, you’ve also sided with an anti-free market approach that opens the door to zoning and central planning that will NOT be what you want.
The other option is to support zoning and central planning of development and try through the democratic process to sway the decisions to the type of development you want to see next door.
Please forgive me for saying this but the first sentence is ridiculous and the second naive.
If you think an ordinary citizen has a chance against the influence exerted by a developer seeking a zone change you are sadly very mistaken.
I work in the industry. I am more than aware of the pull developers have.
My point still stands. If you believe in zoning as a mechanism to get the development you want, be aware that developers will use the exact same system to get what they want.
You can’t have it both ways.
And how is the general public supposed to compete with a developer in the development process? What is the public supposed to do, show up to a planning commission meeting for public comment? You know the deal is done before it ever gets to the planning commission.
Try getting the details from the city prior to the public notice of the planning commission meeting. The public has no chance.
I’m telling you, I know how the system works. I realize that the deals are done before the general public has a chance to comment.
It is the same for single family suburban development.
But who complained when it happened for single family suburban development? You? People who were more than happy to see lots and lots of single family suburban development?
NO.
They did not complain about the system when it went the way they wanted.
Did people opposed to more suburban development have a chance at public comment? A chance to voice their dissent?
NO. They did not.
You can’t have it both ways.
I’m telling you, I know how the system works. I realize that the deals are done before the general public has a chance to comment.
It is the same for single family suburban development.
But who complained when it happened for single family suburban development? You? People who were more than happy to see lots and lots of single family suburban development?
NO.
They did not complain about the system when it went the way they wanted.
Did people opposed to more suburban development have a chance at public comment? A chance to voice their dissent?
NO. They did not.
You can’t have it both ways.
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