[milkytron]

I serve as a planning commissioner for my city, and my city just recently tried to overhaul our zoning code to allow for more affordability and better economic outcomes for our citizens and future as a city. Here is what I have learned:

In the US, few people participate or care about local laws, zoning, and elections, or even understand why participation may be important. In a citizen ballot to determine if we should cap housing construction, 10% of the population voted. 5.1% were in favor of a limit on housing construction, and it passed before later being made illegal by the state. Among those voters, most have rose tinted glasses of better economic times from the past, and want to recreate the past instead of learning from it and using it to make the future better for future residents and businesses.

Most people do not realize how zoning impacts the daily life of everyone in an area, and how it impacts personal finances, which businesses will thrive, and public finances. Where I live, we have an absurd number of chains, and local businesses struggle. Part of this is out of our control, but the part that is (minimum parking requirements, single use zoning, etc) continuously gets upheld against changes that would help local businesses.

I think we need to figure out how to get young people engaged locally. Many young people will protest national or state policies and be engaged at those levels, which is great, but very little time/energy is spent where they could directly see meaningful impact on their lives.

[dv_dt]

Protests come when people are pushed into a corner with little other choice. Participation is more prevalent when people have free time in their lives. Our economics has systematically squeezed free time out in favor of more work to most of our workforce, and particularly hard for young people.

One reason so many local city policies favor the old, is that they're retired and have the time to participate

[_DeadFred_]

This. I fought against a zoning exception (ironic comment) that would allow an asphalt plant near my children's school. When we showed up at meetings, they were canceled and rescheduled at different times for 'reasons'. I managed to get people there every time, but it was tough for parents to get there, and it seemed like the process had been weaponized against our participation.

[FeloniousHam]

When in American history have we had more free time for civic participation?

[eigencoder]

I don't think economics have squeezed out free time -- phones squeeze out all our free time.

[joquarky]

If the economy continues in it's current vector, there will be a lot more unemployed people with idle hands available to do interesting things.

[sharts]

Protests are also largely useless.

[favflam]

Some politician in Japan pushed zoning away from cities up to the prefecture and national level. So locals do not get veto rights over new construction.

[cornholio]

It's an archetypal social coordination problem that can't be solved at a local level. If relaxed zoning pushes all new buildings into my neighborhood, because all other vote against it, then I'm going to end up with 20 stories of balconies hanging above my property but see no benefits, not even indirect ones like lower rents leading to lower inflation and prices etc. Some developer will simply capture that rent - both in the rent extraction sense and the real estate rent meanings.

A smart central planner can act for the shared benefit, they are sensitive to the votes of renters in some other high density area that also can't solve the problem locally etc.

[milkytron]

My state did something similar recently as well for land within a quarter mile of transit, they have to be zoned for a minimum number of housing units, and parking minimums cannot be enforced in that radius. Some of the municipalities impacted are suing the state.

[m463]

That statement reminds me of ikiru.

(an akira kurosawa movie about a japanese politician)

[dfxm12]

5.1% were in favor of a limit on housing construction, and it passed before later being made illegal by the state.

FWIW, it is a learned behavior that voting doesn't change much. It doesn't help when elected officials obviously ignore the will of the people (nationally, see polling data on legalizing, or even at least decriminalizing, marijuana, as one example), or when things just get overturned by someone else. My neighborhood "votes" on zoning, but the vote literally means nothing. The city council has to hear how we voted, but they don't have to take the vote into account.

I get that it's easy to scold people that don't vote, but it is more important that people with power do something to earn our votes. Hold them accountable. They're failing us more than our neighbors who have either been taught that voting doesn't matter especially when sometimes voting laws make it harder than it should be to vote anyway.

[systemtest]

A good start would be to allow everyone living in the city to vote. I don't care about politics, zoning or planning if I am not allowed to vote or participate. There isn't anything I can do, so why bother putting effort into it?

[dymk]

Did you not register to vote or something?

[Spooky23]

There’s a lot you can do. Voting is the entry stake. You can make a big impact with a very low level of political engagement.

Allowing popular referendum for everything just invites a particular and usually really dumb level of politics. You can influence a board’s decision and get some or all of what you want.

IMO one of the biggest problems with society is that you have this view that politics is this idea that it’s some sort of magical thing that is done to you. I can get my city councilman on the phone easily. Probably would get a meeting with my state senator in a few days if need be. Just show up and work with people.

[petcat]

> allow everyone living in the city to vote

Who is "everyone" in this case?

[freedomben]

I'm not saying GP was implying this, but my read of their comment is that it would be a bad thing for everyone to start to voting. If a person doesn't know what they're voting for, they're not more likely to make good decisions. They're just more likely to cancel out the vote of someone who did educate themselves.

[packetlost]

It's touched on in this article, but there's a lot more than just zoning that makes it impractical to operate businesses like the ones being talked about. Tax code, health code, ADA, etc. not to mention the complete lack of density in the majority of the US.

As much as I'd love to have something like Matsuya in the US, it's just not practical here. I'm surprised it hasn't been talked about yet, but zoning is also a major factor in the spiraling of housing costs.

[slumberlust]

How do you even find out about these types of votes? Other than state/federal voting every two years, I wasn't aware there were more times to cast a vote locally.

[nobodyandproud]

I’ll add that I don’t even know how to paricipate; or likely would if I did (inconvenient times, dates).

This is no accident.

Edit: I’m not young, but I didn’t grow up with any sort of privilege.

[vjulian]

This sort of citizen engagement is cute, naïve and ultimately pointless. Where I live in the US the major landowner(s) and local billionaire(s) ultimately controls these things. I’m not being sarcastic.

[soared]

Just 16 people voted in Glendale’s municipal election amid the pandemic

https://www.denverpost.com/2020/04/21/glendale-election-coro...

Glendale, Colorado is the quintessential example of this. Like 2,000 people live there due to insane gerrymandering, but there are tons of businesses and money moving around. The mayor gives crazy zoning benefits to his wife (strip club and dispensary on the main road, right next to target and chikfila) among other controversy. Dunafon controls the county with the help of other powerful players.

[freedomben]

Yep, largely the same for me. Half the city council and most of the planning commission seats are held by real estate people or developers. The state government is heavily influenced by the Realtors Association, and will frequently override local ordinances at the state level when they don't go favorably enough for the real estate industry. It was pretty disappointing to discover.

[mgfist]

> Where I live in the US the major landowner(s) and local billionaire(s) ultimately controls these things

Idk exactly what you mean by `major landowner(s)`, but where I live, zoning and permitting is controlled by retired people who own homes and have all the time to show up to 2pm meetings on Tuesdays and demand nothing new get built to "preserve character". They are landowners, but they're certainly not billionaires. The young people who need housing are working and thus can't show up, thus nothing gets built, creating a flywheel of stagnation and price increases.

[nine_k]

The point of the OP post, AFAICT, is that even in places where there are no powerful billionaire-backed campaigns and lobbying, and people can have their way with simple, effortless voting, too few people even care! And those who act, do so cluelessly, or in a narrowly selfish way.

The most powerful weapon the powerful have against the majority of "ordinary people" is to propagate the idea that all this local stuff is boring and ultimately decides nothing. To make people stop caring.

[vjulian]

I find it curious that I earned -2 points. Perhaps my points in the post were too pointed for some people. That, or some people really love civics theatre.

[slibhb]

"We can't do anything because the billionaires" is such dumb cynicism. Actually, local government has a say in zoning almost everywhere in the US. If more people participated, they could make a real difference.

[mothballed]

I think there is a snowball effect with zoning. I specifically sought out a place zoned with no building code checks and hardly any zoning. I value my right to die in a fire a lot more than I value my right to have the jack-boot enter my own property and tell me he knows best.

People like me go to places with fairly free zoning. The jack boot lickers go to places with restricted zoning. Once one has a majority it just snowballs and pushes harder and harder in the direction it is going, because no one wants to buy/build a house in a place that will flip from the one strategy to the other.

[ecshafer]

Building Codes and Zoning are orthogonal concepts. Japan has more lax zoning than the US at large more more stringent building codes.

[vel0city]

I can't imagine I'd ever want to buy a house from someone who makes a point to live someplace where they can install sub-par plumbing and wiring, that this lack of code compliance was the selling point of where to build.

Imagine buying a meal from a restaurant which prides themselves by not meeting the standards of the nearby town's health department.

[verisimi]

> most have rose tinted glasses of better economic times from the past, and want to recreate the past instead of learning from it and using it to make the future better for future residents and businesses

So the voters are wrong? You know what's "better" for them, right? Whether they want it or not, right?

> we need to figure out how to get young people engaged locally

Because they are more in line with what you think?

PS

I'm being downvoted - but what is the point of local administrators, except to follow the voters demands? Sure, if you are a local politician, make your case, but local administrators ought to be doing whatever-it-is that people voted for. That's the whole point of voting, as I understand it.

The point is NOT to make people keep voting until they get it right, according to the administratots. That's the wrong way around! The administrators should be enacting whatever the voters want.

[milkytron]

> So the voters are wrong? You know what's "better" for them, right? Whether they want it or not, right?

It doesn't really matter what I think when 5% of the population are controlling policy that impacts 100% of the population.

> Because they are more in line with what you think?

No, because they will be impacted for a longer period of time, and are less engaged locally.

[blacksmith_tb]

Not the OP, but I took their implication to be that 5% of the electorate decided the direction future development would take (or not take).