The article that got me started down this rabbit hole for a full Proper Tack on cities was by Devon Zuegel, in which he
compared North American and Japanese zoning. Japan is essentially zoned at a national level, using 12 different zones ranging from low-rise residential to exclusive industrial. This makes the planning and building processes easier by lowering the number of regulations a builder needs to know how to work through in order to get a project started (and finished). North American zoning is much locally-controlled, and can have thousands of different permutations of what is and is not allowed in a single metro area. Of course, this also means that local communities can have direct input on how they want their neighborhood to grow.
One other major difference is that zoning in Japan is maximally inclusive, meaning that if something is allowed in a more restricted zone it is almost certainly allowed in a less restricted zone as well. Compare that to zoning in North America which tends to be exclusionary, meaning we have very limited building types in specific zones. This is one of the reasons we end up with
so. much. parking.
The Japan/North America comparison caught my eye because Atlanta is currently going through
a total rewrite of their zoning code. If choosing a Japanese-style regulation to emulate, I would prefer Atlanta focus on more inclusive zoning regulations. Local control is a major positive for America communities, and something that I doubt will ever be moved up to even a state level. However, I have also come to believe that many local zoning decision go too far in “protecting” neighborhoods in ways that end up hurting the overall economy.
One impact of tight local control is that it limits construction, both for new housing and additions. This artificially increases the value of existing housing, limiting a region’s ability to grow population and workforce. Meanwhile, local activists for affordable housing complain that all developers are building is “luxury housing.” The real reason for that is the
demand mostly shows up from luxury locations. As noted in the StrongTowns article, "you build almost anything in Tribeca or Beverly Hills or Back Bay, someone will pay top dollar for it.” And this is because of scarcity stemming from limiting building.
These "luxury locations" impact the economy by essentially making areas unbuildable. It costs
$750,000 to build an affordable housing unit in San Francisco, the poster child for restrictive zoning. It also means that people leave expensive cities to move to cheaper ones.
Increasingly, freelancers are
decamping from big cities to lower-cost-of-living outposts where their earnings stretch much farther. In some respects, this is the way that the economy is supposed to work; if you can't afford living in a specific city, you live in a cheaper location, which helps build that area up. But with the rise of the internet, fewer high paying jobs require an in-person presence in order to spread to different regions of the country. So Facebook doesn't need folks working in St Louis in order for their product to be available there, which is why states will offer
tax breaks that don't pay back for 25+ years in order to lure companies.
Freelancers are uniquely positioned to get around this, but there are major caveats for them as well. It is much harder to find clients while living in town of 3,500 people if you have not already have a good batch of connections and successful work you can point to. That means even these freelancers who move away likely need to build reputations in a major city, making it essentially another, similarly expensive, version of college.
In the long run, this isn't good for cities big or small, as the people moving to "big city finishing school" aren't likely to be invested in that city's long-term success, and the small town is only gaining individual mid-to-high salary residents rather than businesses that will employ hundreds.
How does this all continue to play out in the next 20 years? I'm not sure. But I expect that we will continue to see cities and states trying new ways to attract and retain both companies and residents.
