I would like to see someone with more familiarity with the planning system attempt to make a similar "yes, and..." argument that Callaci and Vaheesan tried to make. It is an important perspective that could be explained better.
I can't blame them either, Planning in the anglosphere is needlessly confusing.
A more nuanced look at why 'X upzoning' worked and 'Y upzoning' didn't is necessary and that requires planning experience. Every zoning bylaw is unique. Saying "the results of upzoning have been mixed" doesn't cut it.
As is mine, and I don't find myself disagreeing with you at all in this piece.
I am also interested in further exploration of how to create the outcomes we're looking for - e.g. how to accelerate supply beyond what the market can bear to reduce the cost of housing
I kept waiting for either side to detail what Houston did with the subsidies that got rid of 2/3 of their homeless problem (if both sides agree that happened).
What I got was that they both appeared to distort the other side's arguments and that both agreed on some things.
"the YIMBY agenda lacks a serious commitment to housing for all as a social right" is such a wild statement. like others, i found my way to YIMBY bc i was sick and tired of people saying no to homeless shelters.
It's annoying when people refuse to acknowledge fundamental truths.
Ex: m willing to acknowledge that in a market based systems you will have unequal outcomes. However the far left refuses to acknowledge 1. that unequal is better than equally awful and 2. Markets are more efficient than govs
Markets *can* be more efficient than direct control, and they will be if the markets are focused on the correct societal goal.
What tends to happen is that the goals of the market shift away from the goals of society and then the market becomes wildly inefficient compared to direct control.
So I would contend that markets ARE more efficient at achieving a particular goal.
However as you are saying if the goal is simply to maximize profits then from a societal standpoint they can be less effective. Which means the solution is steering the market, not stamping it out.
Those advocating for the wholesale shift from private home / apartment construction to mass public housing construction are essentially advocating for that. There are people calling for the banning of new, non public housing, construction. It'll never happen but in theory it could
Depends what you wanna call direct control, but pretty much every US housing market has been massively controlled away from anything like a free market in land use. Monotonous swaths of single-family houses are extremely artificial and the result of government control.
Yeah it depends on what you imagine the market goal to be, and what you consider to be a (free) market.
If the outcome you imagine from a market is "affordable housing for everyone", well, the current situation doesn't reflect that. So, is that bc there's too much market, or too much control?...
Or, if the outcome you imagine from a market is "the rich accumulate capital at the expense of everyone else", you feel validated by the current situation. But someone else can argue that's not bc of the market, but bc of too much regulation/govt control.
world fits clean definitions, everything is complex and ill-defined (ie, is local control = powerful market players(homeowners), or is local control = govt control?)
and people can project whatever definitions and abstract ideology they want onto the problem to validate their preexisting beliefs
Yup. We're in a zombie market nightmare where the markets just do whatever they want and everyone pretends that's the best we can have because anything else is socialism.
The housing market is actually a really interesting case because not only are the market's goals misaligned with society's, but the market's goals appear to have reverse-infected the government so as to enshrine the market's terrible goals as law.
That is a type of or reference to regularly capture. And it isn't just in the housing market.
The market gaining control over the government mechanisms intended to police the market is definitely a bad outcome and one we are seeing all over in the USA
I think it's not unusual for the market's goals to "infect" the govt... isn't that just "crony capitalism" (or also "regulatory capture") and a pretty standard feature of how capitalism works?
The US housing market is essentially a zombie. We're busily churning out high-end townhouses and single family homes while NIMBY local and state legislatures shut down any possibility for high density housing, walkable cities and supporting infrastructure.
40 years ago, my neighborhood in NJ had a small abandoned school building, eyesore and attractive nuisance to kids.
There was a proposal to turn it into a shelter for battered women, and the NIMBYs blocked it. Said that women and children shouldn't be in a neighborhood, maybe downtown.
Comments
A more nuanced look at why 'X upzoning' worked and 'Y upzoning' didn't is necessary and that requires planning experience. Every zoning bylaw is unique. Saying "the results of upzoning have been mixed" doesn't cut it.
I am also interested in further exploration of how to create the outcomes we're looking for - e.g. how to accelerate supply beyond what the market can bear to reduce the cost of housing
What I got was that they both appeared to distort the other side's arguments and that both agreed on some things.
Ex: m willing to acknowledge that in a market based systems you will have unequal outcomes. However the far left refuses to acknowledge 1. that unequal is better than equally awful and 2. Markets are more efficient than govs
What tends to happen is that the goals of the market shift away from the goals of society and then the market becomes wildly inefficient compared to direct control.
However as you are saying if the goal is simply to maximize profits then from a societal standpoint they can be less effective. Which means the solution is steering the market, not stamping it out.
If the outcome you imagine from a market is "affordable housing for everyone", well, the current situation doesn't reflect that. So, is that bc there's too much market, or too much control?...
It all gets blurry bc nothing in the real..
and people can project whatever definitions and abstract ideology they want onto the problem to validate their preexisting beliefs
The market gaining control over the government mechanisms intended to police the market is definitely a bad outcome and one we are seeing all over in the USA
There was a proposal to turn it into a shelter for battered women, and the NIMBYs blocked it. Said that women and children shouldn't be in a neighborhood, maybe downtown.
I, a YIMBY, can account for what I’ve personally done!