Reply to The Urbanist Cult

Forum Index » Metropolitan DC Local Politics

Reply to "The Urbanist Cult"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

[b]It wasn’t many posts ago that urbanists were claiming everything was zoned for single family detached. [/b]But glad that’s been cleared about.

Your weak attempt at whataboutism conflates two classes of multifamily zoning: small-scale and large scale. Small scale exists in pockets but there should be more of it. Large scale is underutilized all the time, especially in recent projects. When a developer scales back a project by 25 percent after it was approved, doesn’t that have the same effect on supply and price as zoning? Why aren’t you trying to make that harder? Voluntarily delaying approved projects also has the same effect on supply and price. What is urbanism doing about that? Jurisdictions have approved tens of thousands more units than have been built. We could solve the developer-created housing project if those units were built. No other action needed for 10-20 years.

If you care about increasing housing supply, you’ll make a plan to make sure every lot is built to best use. If you just care about padding profits for developers and other landowners, you’ll keep doing what you’re doing. Urbanists’ failure to address voluntary underutilization is very telling about where they stand.[/quote]

Nobody was claiming that. However, there is a lot of land that is zoned for exclusively single-family-detached.

It's kind of funny for a person to complain about whataboutism while also complaining that urbanists aren't complaining about developers who build projects that are smaller than the maximum allowed.[/quote]

There’s a difference between not engaging an argument in good faith by misstating the argument and changing the subject (what you were doing) and pointing out that the policy recommendation (in this case upzoning alone) is inadequate to fulfill the stated policy goal (more density). [/quote]

Oh hey, look who's not engaging in good faith! Nobody is saying that upzoning alone will increase density. We're just hung up on upzoning because somebody upthread is convinced it's unnecessary and that Ward 3 will be irreparably harmed if people are allowed to build duplexes there.[/quote]

You have made no other suggestions, even when asked. Urbanists in local policy positions have made no other suggestions, readily approve underutilization, and have singularly focused on zoning. It’s fair to conclude you’re not willing to hold developers to account for their roles in driving housing prices up or do anything to make it harder for them to continue to do so.[/quote]

What an absurd argument. Developers are responding to the regulatory incentives put in place by government, of which zoning is a major one.

I apologize if I've missed solicitations for other suggestions, but I just reread the thread and didn't see any.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics