alt Hacker News...that's a pretty disingenuous take on zoning, which has many other motives beyond racism.
For example zoning keeps industry away from residential, preventing disasters like the West Texas Fertilizer explosion.
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Must we have extremes? I could live near ”no explosives” zoning, while still allowing at lot more than is typical today.
The state claims jurisdiction on pretty much all the "seriously heavy" industry people like to trot out as though it would be in your back yard if not for zoning. The local towns don't get much of a say and even when they do the projects are high dollar enough that if the town won't grant it then they'll win on appeal and it'll be no big deal.
Aaaand, the real kicker is that the towns typically can't fight too hard because a lot of zoning provisions they'd use are not up to the legal standard it takes to do battle with a megacorp and they'd rather keep them on the books as they are than have the megacorp's lawyers pick them apart.
So you can still have Chernoybl in your back yard with zoning.
It's funny that people always bring this up, but I don't see what centrally planned mandatory setbacks, height limits, and parking mandates have to do with preventing industrial accidents.