If you support Vienna housing model but aren't focused on abolishing single family zoning completely, you aren't actually following Viennas housing model, as Vienna has no single family zoning.

I wish people would understand that adding more housing supply *is* a tenant protection. A market where landlords have to compete fiercely to keep tenants is a pro tenant rights enviornment

micromobility devices kill about 20-40 people per year.

in contrast, about 450 people per year die falling out of bed.

I am much more worried about the jackwad driving the lifted Ford F350, then someone on an Ebike

statistically, I should be much more worried about the ergonomics of my bedframe.

Oh, and just for comparison. 450 people per year die from FALLING OUT OF BED.

Should we call for regulations requiring helmets when you hit the sack?

You want rampant illiteracy? Can you read the difference between more then 40,000 deaths, as opposed to less then 200?

If you want safer streets, paying any attention to micromobility devices is nothing but beurocratically unproductive nonsense compared to focusing on automotive safety.

No, the fact that everyone is pointing out the cultural stupidity of emphasizing Ebikes in safety conversations.

Micromobility devices (which includes escooters, bikes, and eskateboards) killed 223 people between 2017-2022.

In JUST 2023, there was 40,901 deaths from motor vehicle crashes.

A lot of urbanists are actually NIMBYs.

YIMBY = You should decide where you want to live and what you want to do and build on your own land as long as its safe and sanitary

NIMBY urbanist = everybody needs to live in my architecturally ideal walkable town where everything is where I want it.

lmfao

single family home car suburbs are an absolute abomination. Abolish zoning and illegalize restrictive covenants so I can hear my NIMBY neighbors scream as I desecrate the suburban form with a little 3 over 1 that goes all the way to the curb

"no you cannot build the high property tax revenue buildings that are great for funding infastructure, we do not have the infastructure needed for those high property tax revenue buildings that are great for funding infastructure!"

You know San Jose makes it illegal to put an RV or Mobile Home anywhere other then a local government designated mobile home park, which requires a lengthy and expensive permitting process.

Abolishing Title 20 of the San Jose Municipal code would lower rents waaay more then anything else.

are there any YIMBY type meetups in the Seattle area?

or is this the Seattle Freeze I been hearing about

I feel we have a LOT of yimby'ing we need to do before we have to start worrying about an unfettered market.

Lets get rid of subjective zoning, ban certain restrictive covenants, get rid of a ton of unnessicary city ordinances and subdivision regulations - then start concerning ourselves with that

but is this the right time for skepticism of the unfettered market?

The housing market is a literal planned economy with so many unnessicary land use restrictions that I can't even list them all.

If we had literally no zoning or land use laws at all maybe that skepticism would be valid, but now?

The problem with this is that "communities" aren't a monolith. Most of them don't have any unanimous opinion on land use.

When you understand that, allowing each individual to decide their own land use and form without their neighbors having a say becomes the most sensible way to do things.

Do new construction condos from one of the big regional development firms increase supply and relieve prices? Absolutely, the research is clear.

But it is much better for good YIMBY communication that the animosity towards regionally dominant developers is understood.

this is true but I wanna acknowledge what's kinda going on here

because local control of land use is such an awful system it basically means only a small number of big regional firms get development rights. This creates a developer oligopoly that Left NIMBYs notice and fundamentally distrust.

Seattle government gonna be like

"OK how about we do what Vienna does but we add tons more red tape, build like 1/10th of the housing supply that Vienna does, and we let single family homeowners veto social housing that they don't like"

Vienna also builds like 10x more housing of all kinds then literally any city in the US lol

Local control, in its effort to represent The Community™ actually ends up representing the oldest, wealthiest, individuals that don't have a 40 hour a week job and can show up to meetings and vote.

Liberalis and the Ultra Lefts "community focus" hits a backfire effect with land use

It exposes why local control of land use sucks so bad.

When you realize there is no "one voice" of the community, the most sensible answer is to let each individual decide what they want to do with their own parcel of land without having their development rights taken away by their neighbors.

Right now big developers, who are the only ones with development rights, are the ones doing all those bad things. If you let anyone build whatever safe structures they want on their own land, you give developers that won't do that a chance to enter the market

Yes. They will.

It's well studied that zoning and unnessicary land use laws increase both housing and land prices.

Housing speculators LOVE strict zoning because it means they know exactly what will be built and where.

Unpredictable, unrestricted development is a speculators nightmare.

fortunately higher density housing produces more property tax revenue per acre and is better at funding infastructure.

In the same way that I am going to trust the experts in climate science when they say that climate change is real, I am going to trust the experts in housing policy when they say that local land use laws are the cause of the housing shortage.

It's also more like 41%, not 94%.

I mean, sure. Tenant rights are great, but not the cause of the housing shortage. I don't want "big apartments with no parking" I want the housing type, form, density, and decision to add parking or not to be decided by the landowner, not the government.

Right now only big developers can exist because those are the only ones with the lawyer money and connections to build on their land.

If we let anyone build whatever safe structures they want on their own land, then small developers can build cheap housing and compete against corporate landlords.

it is not? a small number of single family homeowners, city officials, and big developers who want housing to be scarce, they make those laws. Not small developers who can't exist rn

and yeah, letting people build however much housing to solve the housing shortage is exactly the strategy.

the city's planned economy for housing