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If this paves the way for more infill, I think it’s a good thing. The city of Dallas has a lot of opportunity there.
As for densifying through ADUs, I’ve never lived in a suburb where I think it would just ruin and wreck it. A lot of people seem to REALLY hate this idea. First I don’t see every homeowner going this route. Second, I don’t see how this hurts property valuations. It’s more square footage and/or rental income. It’s also great for having a multigenerational household as well, which isn’t the awful problem that bringing strangers into a neighborhood could be.
I find it amusing how the "density at all costs, to hell with the existing residents and their quality of life" crowd will pull out these pseudo-libertarian arguments against zoning when (and only when) the zoning supports single family detached houses. While they'd be perfectly happy for every other house in a neighborhood to have two apartments over the garage, with the concomitant increased load on utilities, parking issues, transient population issues, etc. - and they'd be perfectly happy for a developer to buy up a couple dozen small houses in a neighborhood and put in 250 apartments in a four story building right in the middle of the place - let a developer propose a manufacturing plant, or lead smelter, next door and you'll see them marching out front of City Hall with placards. Their worship of the free market only extends to situations where the free market supports their particular quasi-religious beliefs.
And the proof of the pudding is in the eating; overwhelemingly when people in the US have the opportunity and finances to select the kind of housing THEY want, they go for single family detached housing near a city center. Of course there simply isn't enough of that kind of housing, so they compromise. Etiher they live in apartments, row houses, or duplexes (or triple-deckers in old Northern cities) to be near the city center; or they move further out than they really want and accept the commute. But when they can, the choice of the American people is almost always the single family detached house. And amazingly enough they keep electing and re-electing city council members and other officials who appoint zoning boards who will maintain SFH areas WITHOUT garage apartments and apartment buildings in the middle of them.
If the majority of Americans actually preferred attached multi-family housing to detached SFH, and if SFH owners really wanted to have a bunch of apartments inserted into their neighborhoods, they'd be electing representatives who would appoint zoning boards that would change the zoning. But they don't.
So basically you have to assume either that the American people are idiots and don't know what they want (so the Central Planning Commissariat needs to tell them what they want and make sure they get it), or that they DO know what they want and keep voting for it, over and over and over and over and over again.
This is an interesting post because it somehow accuses the same people of being both pseudo-libertarians and the "Central Planning Commissariat". That's an interesting combo.
While I agree with you that Americans prefer SFH near a city center, the reason that there's not enough of that type of housing is the market - demand goes up, land prices go up, and it becomes both more expensive to develop/redevelop housing and more profitable to use land to its highest and best use and densify. So restrictive zoning is just warping the market to the benefit of those early landowners. In Houston without zoning, I always say that close-in poor neighborhoods densify while close-in middle-to-higher income neighborhoods fancify with bigger, fancier houses. That's just what the market does in the context of rising land prices (absent deed restrictions).
While I do believe there should be some zoning power exercised in pursuit of reasonable health and safety regulations (e.g. the smelter next to a school example), and directing infrastructure (traffic/water/electricity) for development, I generally don't think the government should be telling people how they can or can't use their land. Limitations should be agreed upon by a group of landowners via deed restrictions (and even so, those should be temporary and subject to review/homeowner revote after 40 or 50 years in my opinion).
This is an interesting post because it somehow accuses the same people of being both pseudo-libertarians and the "Central Planning Commissariat". That's an interesting combo.
While I agree with you that Americans prefer SFH near a city center, the reason that there's not enough of that type of housing is the market - demand goes up, land prices go up, and it becomes both more expensive to develop/redevelop housing and more profitable to use land to its highest and best use and densify. So restrictive zoning is just warping the market to the benefit of those early landowners. In Houston without zoning, I always say that close-in poor neighborhoods densify while close-in middle-to-higher income neighborhoods fancify with bigger, fancier houses. That's just what the market does in the context of rising land prices (absent deed restrictions).
While I do believe there should be some zoning power exercised in pursuit of reasonable health and safety regulations (e.g. the smelter next to a school example), and directing infrastructure (traffic/water/electricity) for development, I generally don't think the government should be telling people how they can or can't use their land. Limitations should be agreed upon by a group of landowners via deed restrictions (and even so, those should be temporary and subject to review/homeowner revote after 40 or 50 years in my opinion).
The prefix "pseudo" means "false" or "spurious".
They aren't libertarians at all, but they know to couch their arguments in that language ("the government shouldn't be telling people how to use their land!") when it's convenient.
This is an interesting post because it somehow accuses the same people of being both pseudo-libertarians and the "Central Planning Commissariat". That's an interesting combo.
While I agree with you that Americans prefer SFH near a city center, the reason that there's not enough of that type of housing is the market - demand goes up, land prices go up, and it becomes both more expensive to develop/redevelop housing and more profitable to use land to its highest and best use and densify. So restrictive zoning is just warping the market to the benefit of those early landowners. In Houston without zoning, I always say that close-in poor neighborhoods densify while close-in middle-to-higher income neighborhoods fancify with bigger, fancier houses. That's just what the market does in the context of rising land prices (absent deed restrictions).
While I do believe there should be some zoning power exercised in pursuit of reasonable health and safety regulations (e.g. the smelter next to a school example), and directing infrastructure (traffic/water/electricity) for development, I generally don't think the government should be telling people how they can or can't use their land. Limitations should be agreed upon by a group of landowners via deed restrictions (and even so, those should be temporary and subject to review/homeowner revote after 40 or 50 years in my opinion).
People looking at the affordability problem are looking at it from the wrong angle. It's not about increasing supply but reducing demand. While cramming in tenements and skinny trailers may have that effect, it will never be enough. More needs to be done to curb the excess business and economic growth that draw people.
My plan to "move Dallas forward" would be to kill two birds with one stone by not only not building or expanding but actually getting rid of all the highways that run through the city. That gives more room for housing and discourages the excess of high paying businesses and economic growth and accessibility that seem to attract people. It's a win-win!
My plan to "move Dallas forward" would be to kill two birds with one stone by not only not building or expanding but actually getting rid of all the highways that run through the city. That gives more room for housing and discourages the excess of high paying businesses and economic growth and accessibility that seem to attract people. It's a win-win!
My plan to "move Dallas forward" would be to kill two birds with one stone by not only not building or expanding but actually getting rid of all the highways that run through the city. That gives more room for housing and discourages the excess of high paying businesses and economic growth and accessibility that seem to attract people. It's a win-win!
When I lived in Raleigh, one thing I loved about it there was that the highway looped around the city rather than cut through it. Loved that. But you can’t really do this in Dallas or the majority of America. The infrastructure has been there for decades
If this paves the way for more infill, I think it’s a good thing. The city of Dallas has a lot of opportunity there.
As for densifying through ADUs, I’ve never lived in a suburb where I think it would just ruin and wreck it. A lot of people seem to REALLY hate this idea. First I don’t see every homeowner going this route. Second, I don’t see how this hurts property valuations. It’s more square footage and/or rental income. It’s also great for having a multigenerational household as well, which isn’t the awful problem that bringing strangers into a neighborhood could be.
Well, the city of Dallas is not a suburb, first of all.
In my neighborhood, there are already cars up and down both sides of the streets and the new McMansions are shoved right up against the 5 foot property line setbacks. We've been trying to get the streets repaved for 10 years now and nothing. There are at least two water main breaks that continually leak, water loss ranging from seepage to flooding depending on the time of year. A couple times a year one of the old transformers blows up. I can't even imagine if every third house had an apartment in the back, with one or two people and their cars, their electricity usage, their water and sewer usage.
No one seems to realize that the water lines, the sewer lines, the electric service, the gas line, the phone lines, all that is sized for one family per lot. You start increasing all that, you need to increase all those utilities. Which means digging up the streets to upsize the utilities that are buried, endless construction (the gas line replacement took a year and it was constant heavy equipment from 8 am to 6 pm five days a week; now they'll probably have to do it over again), but in the interim there'll be the running of new electric and phone lines to keep it noisy and crowded if there's a brief respite from the sewer water and gas upgrades.
Never mind the increase in noise, the increase in traffic, and the general degradation that comes from increasing the transient renter population.
And all this in a neighborhood where LOT PRICE is half a million bucks! I can only imagine the chaos in the less expensive areas.
Well, the city of Dallas is not a suburb, first of all.
In my neighborhood, there are already cars up and down both sides of the streets and the new McMansions are shoved right up against the 5 foot property line setbacks. We've been trying to get the streets repaved for 10 years now and nothing. There are at least two water main breaks that continually leak, water loss ranging from seepage to flooding depending on the time of year. A couple times a year one of the old transformers blows up. I can't even imagine if every third house had an apartment in the back, with one or two people and their cars, their electricity usage, their water and sewer usage.
No one seems to realize that the water lines, the sewer lines, the electric service, the gas line, the phone lines, all that is sized for one family per lot. You start increasing all that, you need to increase all those utilities. Which means digging up the streets to upsize the utilities that are buried, endless construction (the gas line replacement took a year and it was constant heavy equipment from 8 am to 6 pm five days a week; now they'll probably have to do it over again), but in the interim there'll be the running of new electric and phone lines to keep it noisy and crowded if there's a brief respite from the sewer water and gas upgrades.
Never mind the increase in noise, the increase in traffic, and the general degradation that comes from increasing the transient renter population.
And all this in a neighborhood where LOT PRICE is half a million bucks! I can only imagine the chaos in the less expensive areas.
If utility capacity is an issue, then simply don't allow upsized or new connections. Don't regulate through zoning restrictions. In that case, you are using legit life/safety regulatory approach.
Also, a rather large share of Dallas (especially to the north) was developed as a post-WWII suburb. So when you cross the city limit from north Dallas into Farmers Branch, Richardson, or Addison, you're going from "core" to "suburb", even though you probably can't tell the difference?
They aren't libertarians at all, but they know to couch their arguments in that language ("the government shouldn't be telling people how to use their land!") when it's convenient.
So is Houston's regulatory approach big-government totalitarian? Seems to be what you're saying...
This is an interesting post because it somehow accuses the same people of being both pseudo-libertarians and the "Central Planning Commissariat". That's an interesting combo.
While I agree with you that Americans prefer SFH near a city center, the reason that there's not enough of that type of housing is the market - demand goes up, land prices go up, and it becomes both more expensive to develop/redevelop housing and more profitable to use land to its highest and best use and densify. So restrictive zoning is just warping the market to the benefit of those early landowners. In Houston without zoning, I always say that close-in poor neighborhoods densify while close-in middle-to-higher income neighborhoods fancify with bigger, fancier houses. That's just what the market does in the context of rising land prices (absent deed restrictions).
While I do believe there should be some zoning power exercised in pursuit of reasonable health and safety regulations (e.g. the smelter next to a school example), and directing infrastructure (traffic/water/electricity) for development, I generally don't think the government should be telling people how they can or can't use their land. Limitations should be agreed upon by a group of landowners via deed restrictions (and even so, those should be temporary and subject to review/homeowner revote after 40 or 50 years in my opinion).
One factor in Houston is that some of the fanciest inside-the-Loop and Uptown SFD areas have private deed restrictions preventing non-SFH uses or lot splitting. Which is fine.
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