logoalt Hacker News

llamaimperative10/14/20241 replyview on HN

I said "Raleigh doubled its zoned density overnight." You said "No they did not" and "No city has implemented anything like zoning reform." Both of these are false.

You can refer to the text changes. They doubled the zoned density in nearly every residential zoning type in the city. It is a huge change, though I suppose you can claim that's not "reform" if you want. It is sufficiently reformative for my purposes of increasing urban density over time.

Changes will take time to kick in, and obviously they should take time to kick in because simply clicking a button and doubling actual built density would crater the economy. It makes no sense. The zoning change removes an artificial restriction on the natural supply/demand curve, so now supply can grow as-needed in the forms desired.


Replies

Schiendelman10/14/2024

I don't think it really does to the supply/demand curve what you think it does.

In general, when new construction occurs, it's taking low density and replacing it with more like 10X density. A very tiny amount of land gets developed at once, so you need each new development opportunity to generate as much supply as possible.

What this did was make people think gosh, that means a lot of housing! But in actuality, very few of these ever get built. Only very old housing stock ever makes sense to replace with only a doubling.

I appreciate what you're trying to say, but what I said was actually true. This won't have much impact. I can give you drips and drabs of information this way to help you understand how development works, but I can't give you an entire primer, unless you'd like to get on the Zoom and talk about it for a couple hours.

show 1 reply