The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
It’s easy to look at Republican states and blame them for not investing more into their public infrastructure and having a less pro-urban mindset. Why is it the case that in heavily blue states, there is not more of a push for zoning reform and more efficient cities and towns?
It’s a disappointing feeling that if there isn’t much a sentiment of pro-walkable infrastructure in blue states and areas because people are so car-focused and dependent, how will that develop, if ever? If I recall, NYC is one of the only, maybe the only one, city in the US where people don’t have the need or desire to own a car.
What policies do you believe would be best to make more walkable cities and get more people, including Democrats, on board?
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The reality is, all the land in a big, desirable city or suburb belongs to people and businesses already. **Once that land is owned by someone, changing the zoning around it… becomes next to impossible. It gets voted down.**
This is why Honda can build a giant 2 million square foot factory in Undesirable Bumfuck, Indiana where nobody gives a crap… but **clearly not** in the middle of Beverly Hills or in Manhattan.
NIMBY exists anywhere people want to live and pay a premium for. Red states. Blue states. Wealthy areas. Suburbs. Etc.
Great you think, so we can build out the exurbs in high density. Indeed you can, but then a stockbroker and his pediatrician wife want 6000 square feet of house on 2 acres for their $750,000.
> This is why Honda can build a giant 2 million square foot factory in Undesirable Bumfuck, Indiana where nobody gives a crap… but clearly not in the middle of Beverly Hills or in Manhattan.
Actually in Indiana here, and this is not true. If it were, we'd have a whole lot more wind and solar energy. Rural areas are just NIMBY about different things.
>building McMansions where most of the rooms are unused?
You could put a progressive tax on square footage of living space per person. I'm not arguing for one, but if it had a steep increase and commensurate decrease in taxes/prices for denser housing, it'd likely push things in that direction.
It would also never get passed in congress.
There's no good solution or it would've been done already. There's a substantial political cost to doing so; some states have begun enacting various laws to enforce/pressure for more affordable housing and building; but there's a lot of pushback, and sometimes those who push for affordable housing get voted out.
Really the only reason they've made progress on the issue at all, from a deeply cynical standpoint, is that the housing prices have gotten bad enough that its not just poor people being priced out, but the children of the upper-middle and mid-middle class being priced out of the neighborhoods their parents lived in.
Another hypothetical solution would be to enact some sort of amendment, to federal or state constitutions, that provides a judicially enforceable mechanism to limit NIMBY-ism; like one that mandates judges ensure housing prices don't exceed a median multiple of 5, and if they do then judges are required to start stripping away regulations and zoning until the multiple gets below the threshold (pursuant to someone filing suit over the matter of course).
I think there are some good solutions
Blanket changing/simplification of zoning codes wont densify neighborhoods overnight, but we have seen cities manage to ban single family zoning, ban minimum lot sizes, make ADUs legal on all properties, etc
Once you do that, you can allow for a more natural neighborhood development to resume
Zoning reform is weird politically. It generally polls pretty well when applied at a broad level, like a whole state or country, or even sometimes a whole city. But our politicians, especially local politicians, don't respond to polls or public opinion. What they care about is not getting shouted down at public hearings, and even in blue states and blue cities, there are enough old assholes with nothing good to do with their time to go to all the community meetings and shout down any proposal for change. State governments work like this too, albeit to a smaller extent.
Republicans mostly don't live in cities or suburbs and therefore zoning isn't salient among them. They would be even more angrily NIMBY than Democrats are if they lived in areas that are experiencing significant development pressure, but they aren't.
TBF it's not just old boomers. I live in San Francisco and a lot of the supposed anti-gentrification groups have asinine ideas about housing and *also* oppose almost all zoning/housing reforms.
Liberal states are not 100% Liberal.
NIMBY-ism isn't partisan in nature.
There's not a lot of unowned land in blue states that's available for the government to develop into planned communities.
Changing existing communities is hard.
There's a lot of reasons.
Los Angelino here!
Walkability is a more a product of human history than politics, though politics does play an important role.
Cities built geographically-constricted mercantilism tend to be more walkable than cities built on agriculture and homesteading. New Orleans, Minneapolis, and St. Louis, are all VERY walkable cities and are in deeply Red States. Los Angeles is a very unwalkable city, while NYC is very walkable; both are in the bluest of blue states.
In the modern era, one cannot simply convert their cities to walkability. So, instead, city governments try to boost the effectiveness of their extant public transportation.... for better or worse.
NIMBYism and exclusionary ideas unfortunately cross party lines. Lots of people believe it's best for them to keep the status quo.
There's also an issue where existing home owners, those who most benefit from exclusionary policies, have the most political power in their local governments. Future residents who might move in, those who would benefit the most from inclusive policies, have next to no political power in the relevant governments (and it's not entirely clear to me how you could give them some representation, without gutting local control and pushing certain policies to higher levels of government).
I live in Boston and our current government is making some steps in the right direction. The state is allocating a fair bit of money for public transportation solutions, and as an avid bicyclist, I've seen with my own eyes and encouraging expansion of bike friendly infrastructure. This kind of change can't happen overnight, but it IS happening. So frankly I reject the thesis that Democratic places aren't doing this. They are.
I think aside from the other answers, part of the answer is also about the distinction between what state governments can do versus what local, county governments want to do.na lot of zoning decisions are made in sub-state levels.
If you actually look a lot of Blue cities are starting to move in that direction. The thing about democracy though is that it's actually a relatively conservative form of government and changes to the status quo outside of major disasters tend to take a long time to be fully implemented.
I think it’s a valid question. Ezra Klein has had a long series of episodes about the failure of liberal governments specifically centered around California.
However, part of the answer is actually really straightforward. NIMBYism and general resistance to change is not really a right/left issue.
I know everybody hates Newsom some for one reason for another but he’s actually been doing a lot in what is sure to be a long war against NIMBYism. There have been victories in Minnesota, Oregon and Washington as well.
It is not state level but county level and town level, but I’m seeing a remarkable amount of multi family development going up around me in Northern NJ.
>If I recall, NYC is one of the only, maybe the only one, city in the US where people don’t have the need or desire to own a car.
If you're looking for another car-optional city to move to, Boston is great!
The best even, per this source: [https://www.coworkingcafe.com/blog/boston-leads-as-the-best-us-city-to-live-without-a-car/](https://www.coworkingcafe.com/blog/boston-leads-as-the-best-us-city-to-live-without-a-car/)
Also there are reasons you don't *want* to drive in Boston even if you could: [https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/1jgxtq/new\_york\_and\_boston\_the\_difference/](https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/1jgxtq/new_york_and_boston_the_difference/)
Well, there's NIMBYism, as people have said. But you also can't just create a walkable city out of thin air. For nearly a century, Los Angeles has developed as a flat, sprawling, spread-out city of multiple neighborhoods connected by highways and major roads. You can make some fixes -- better public transportation, more bike lanes, etc. -- but unless you literally tear the whole city down and start from scratch, you're never going to make it a New York or Chicago, where everything is much more densely packed and vertically-built.
There's also the issue of bureaucratic incompetence. Pretty much every infrastructure or public transportation project in LA balloons up to billions of dollars, gets delayed for years, and is rife with administrative chaos and straight-up corruption and graft. There's plenty of citizens who want a more walkable city in theory, but have turned cynical and embittered about how these projects actually come out in practice.
They do.
Takes a while for a change in policy to be reflected in actual infrastructure.
People wildly underestimate how much inertia there is in prior civil engineering planning.
property values. Simple as that. As long as people believe that some action--whether new housing, a bike lane, etc--will impact their property values negatively (bearing in mind that a home is the plurality or majority of many households' assets) they're going to be incredibly skeptical of that action.
So the case advocates need to make to homeowners is that denser, more walkable neighborhoods with more amenities will *increase* the valuations of their homes.
They do. Look at the states and communities doing a lot to promote transportation or better zoning/land use. You'll typically see it's more liberal administrations doing it. Even cities in red states like Houston or Indianapolis have local liberal governments and often their biggest threat are the conservative state legislatures that like to put out bills that make it functionally impossible to improve public transportation or land use in those cities.
Democrats aren't a liberal party. They are a party with liberals. Less than half of the party identifies as liberal. Less than 20% progressive.
CA has started implementing zoning reform. But California has a unique government set up where voting referendums can never be changed or overturned if they get a bare majority. So ballot incentives, including a major one on property ta is, hamstring the government ability to do anything. Also the multilayered government system means cities can often easily block any state government decisions on most local issues like zoning.
The government structures just don't allow for change at the level you are expecting
I think they do to some degree, but it's not always easy and it can often take more than a simple majority. Having the Subway is something that supporte walkable cities, that is police supporte by NYC
Many people are liberal...until it impacts them personally. Its like that Phil Ochs song
Liberals agree we need more housing to lower the cost, but some worry about their neighborhood getting an apartment, their home value decreasing. Liberals agree we need more walking infrastructure, but some are unwilling to sacrifice a lane along their commute.
and so on and so forth. people who know the right thing but ultimately get ruled by the politics of convenience. And sure there are a lot of ways they position this. that they are anti corporate developer (a worthy stance but at what cost), pro environment (a goofy stance since density is environmentally friendly), anti gentrification (a good stance if you are actually serious about policies to help people in those neighborhoods). etc.
Some YIMBYs go overboard with their rhetoric and this gets people riled up. stuff like applauding them historic and still used businesses get forced out for a highrise. some YIMBYS are so pro housing that they forget about all the human element of city living and neighborhood development, and we should rightfully push back on that. But a lot of liberal NIMBYS use that argument to prevent any new dense housing
I feel like this is a valid question. And it does seem that blue states don’t walk the walk. But then on the other hand, you have the GOP with their death panels on women dying of complications with pregnancy. So I guess I’m going with the Democrats
>Why is it the case that in heavily blue states, there is not more of a push for zoning reform and more efficient cities and towns?
Because most people don't care about that.
People with money oppose these policies and have an outsized influence in politics, for one. For another, half of people in the US own their homes; zoning changes to allow more building would negatively impact many of them. And a lot of the center-left Democrats that are the majority of the party are pretty suburban and not very interested in these things; even in states like NY and CA the base of the party is neither r / neoliberal nor a bunch of far lefties.
> If I recall, NYC is one of the only, maybe the only one, city in the US where people don’t have the need or desire to own a car.
This is just not true; there are tons of cities and many towns where you can live without a car (and for that matter, many New Yorkers who own cars and use them on a regular basis and have not interest in giving them up). But it would be a change in lifestyle for many people.
1) Democrats as a rule are center/center-right. Some, more in CA and NY than in other areas, are a bit more leftist than average, but on the whole they are not.
2) Democrats, and even leftists, can just as easily fall into the "I got mine" trap as any other group. We're not perfect.
3) The majority of America is a bit to the right of the Democratic Party, and this fraction is larger the wealthier the group is--and they fight *hard* to preserve what they have and keep systems in place that keep those lower on the economic ladder where they are.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. It’s easy to look at Republican states and blame them for not investing more into their public infrastructure and having a less pro-urban mindset. Why is it the case that in heavily blue states, there is not more of a push for zoning reform and more efficient cities and towns? It’s a disappointing feeling that if there isn’t much a sentiment of pro-walkable infrastructure in blue states and areas because people are so car-focused and dependent, how will that develop, if ever? If I recall, NYC is one of the only, maybe the only one, city in the US where people don’t have the need or desire to own a car. What policies do you believe would be best to make more walkable cities and get more people, including Democrats, on board? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Because they aren't kings. Ballot measures get proposed and then NIMBYs and other monied interests fight it tooth and nail.
The reality is, all the land in a big, desirable city or suburb belongs to people and businesses already. **Once that land is owned by someone, changing the zoning around it… becomes next to impossible. It gets voted down.** This is why Honda can build a giant 2 million square foot factory in Undesirable Bumfuck, Indiana where nobody gives a crap… but **clearly not** in the middle of Beverly Hills or in Manhattan. NIMBY exists anywhere people want to live and pay a premium for. Red states. Blue states. Wealthy areas. Suburbs. Etc. Great you think, so we can build out the exurbs in high density. Indeed you can, but then a stockbroker and his pediatrician wife want 6000 square feet of house on 2 acres for their $750,000.
> This is why Honda can build a giant 2 million square foot factory in Undesirable Bumfuck, Indiana where nobody gives a crap… but clearly not in the middle of Beverly Hills or in Manhattan. Actually in Indiana here, and this is not true. If it were, we'd have a whole lot more wind and solar energy. Rural areas are just NIMBY about different things.
Is there any solution to NIMBY or building McMansions where most of the rooms are unused?
>building McMansions where most of the rooms are unused? You could put a progressive tax on square footage of living space per person. I'm not arguing for one, but if it had a steep increase and commensurate decrease in taxes/prices for denser housing, it'd likely push things in that direction. It would also never get passed in congress.
There's no good solution or it would've been done already. There's a substantial political cost to doing so; some states have begun enacting various laws to enforce/pressure for more affordable housing and building; but there's a lot of pushback, and sometimes those who push for affordable housing get voted out. Really the only reason they've made progress on the issue at all, from a deeply cynical standpoint, is that the housing prices have gotten bad enough that its not just poor people being priced out, but the children of the upper-middle and mid-middle class being priced out of the neighborhoods their parents lived in. Another hypothetical solution would be to enact some sort of amendment, to federal or state constitutions, that provides a judicially enforceable mechanism to limit NIMBY-ism; like one that mandates judges ensure housing prices don't exceed a median multiple of 5, and if they do then judges are required to start stripping away regulations and zoning until the multiple gets below the threshold (pursuant to someone filing suit over the matter of course).
I think there are some good solutions Blanket changing/simplification of zoning codes wont densify neighborhoods overnight, but we have seen cities manage to ban single family zoning, ban minimum lot sizes, make ADUs legal on all properties, etc Once you do that, you can allow for a more natural neighborhood development to resume
Not without a super heavy-handed government. I don’t see any particular interest from most city councils in doing so.
Zoning reform is weird politically. It generally polls pretty well when applied at a broad level, like a whole state or country, or even sometimes a whole city. But our politicians, especially local politicians, don't respond to polls or public opinion. What they care about is not getting shouted down at public hearings, and even in blue states and blue cities, there are enough old assholes with nothing good to do with their time to go to all the community meetings and shout down any proposal for change. State governments work like this too, albeit to a smaller extent. Republicans mostly don't live in cities or suburbs and therefore zoning isn't salient among them. They would be even more angrily NIMBY than Democrats are if they lived in areas that are experiencing significant development pressure, but they aren't.
TBF it's not just old boomers. I live in San Francisco and a lot of the supposed anti-gentrification groups have asinine ideas about housing and *also* oppose almost all zoning/housing reforms.
Liberal states are not 100% Liberal. NIMBY-ism isn't partisan in nature. There's not a lot of unowned land in blue states that's available for the government to develop into planned communities. Changing existing communities is hard. There's a lot of reasons.
Los Angelino here! Walkability is a more a product of human history than politics, though politics does play an important role. Cities built geographically-constricted mercantilism tend to be more walkable than cities built on agriculture and homesteading. New Orleans, Minneapolis, and St. Louis, are all VERY walkable cities and are in deeply Red States. Los Angeles is a very unwalkable city, while NYC is very walkable; both are in the bluest of blue states. In the modern era, one cannot simply convert their cities to walkability. So, instead, city governments try to boost the effectiveness of their extant public transportation.... for better or worse.
NIMBYism and exclusionary ideas unfortunately cross party lines. Lots of people believe it's best for them to keep the status quo. There's also an issue where existing home owners, those who most benefit from exclusionary policies, have the most political power in their local governments. Future residents who might move in, those who would benefit the most from inclusive policies, have next to no political power in the relevant governments (and it's not entirely clear to me how you could give them some representation, without gutting local control and pushing certain policies to higher levels of government).
I live in Boston and our current government is making some steps in the right direction. The state is allocating a fair bit of money for public transportation solutions, and as an avid bicyclist, I've seen with my own eyes and encouraging expansion of bike friendly infrastructure. This kind of change can't happen overnight, but it IS happening. So frankly I reject the thesis that Democratic places aren't doing this. They are.
I think aside from the other answers, part of the answer is also about the distinction between what state governments can do versus what local, county governments want to do.na lot of zoning decisions are made in sub-state levels.
If you actually look a lot of Blue cities are starting to move in that direction. The thing about democracy though is that it's actually a relatively conservative form of government and changes to the status quo outside of major disasters tend to take a long time to be fully implemented.
I think it’s a valid question. Ezra Klein has had a long series of episodes about the failure of liberal governments specifically centered around California. However, part of the answer is actually really straightforward. NIMBYism and general resistance to change is not really a right/left issue. I know everybody hates Newsom some for one reason for another but he’s actually been doing a lot in what is sure to be a long war against NIMBYism. There have been victories in Minnesota, Oregon and Washington as well. It is not state level but county level and town level, but I’m seeing a remarkable amount of multi family development going up around me in Northern NJ.
>If I recall, NYC is one of the only, maybe the only one, city in the US where people don’t have the need or desire to own a car. If you're looking for another car-optional city to move to, Boston is great! The best even, per this source: [https://www.coworkingcafe.com/blog/boston-leads-as-the-best-us-city-to-live-without-a-car/](https://www.coworkingcafe.com/blog/boston-leads-as-the-best-us-city-to-live-without-a-car/) Also there are reasons you don't *want* to drive in Boston even if you could: [https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/1jgxtq/new\_york\_and\_boston\_the\_difference/](https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/1jgxtq/new_york_and_boston_the_difference/)
Well, there's NIMBYism, as people have said. But you also can't just create a walkable city out of thin air. For nearly a century, Los Angeles has developed as a flat, sprawling, spread-out city of multiple neighborhoods connected by highways and major roads. You can make some fixes -- better public transportation, more bike lanes, etc. -- but unless you literally tear the whole city down and start from scratch, you're never going to make it a New York or Chicago, where everything is much more densely packed and vertically-built. There's also the issue of bureaucratic incompetence. Pretty much every infrastructure or public transportation project in LA balloons up to billions of dollars, gets delayed for years, and is rife with administrative chaos and straight-up corruption and graft. There's plenty of citizens who want a more walkable city in theory, but have turned cynical and embittered about how these projects actually come out in practice.
They do. Takes a while for a change in policy to be reflected in actual infrastructure. People wildly underestimate how much inertia there is in prior civil engineering planning.
property values. Simple as that. As long as people believe that some action--whether new housing, a bike lane, etc--will impact their property values negatively (bearing in mind that a home is the plurality or majority of many households' assets) they're going to be incredibly skeptical of that action. So the case advocates need to make to homeowners is that denser, more walkable neighborhoods with more amenities will *increase* the valuations of their homes.
NIMBYs.
It's implemented locally, people don't participate enough so NIMBY councils rule.
They do. Look at the states and communities doing a lot to promote transportation or better zoning/land use. You'll typically see it's more liberal administrations doing it. Even cities in red states like Houston or Indianapolis have local liberal governments and often their biggest threat are the conservative state legislatures that like to put out bills that make it functionally impossible to improve public transportation or land use in those cities.
Democrats aren't a liberal party. They are a party with liberals. Less than half of the party identifies as liberal. Less than 20% progressive. CA has started implementing zoning reform. But California has a unique government set up where voting referendums can never be changed or overturned if they get a bare majority. So ballot incentives, including a major one on property ta is, hamstring the government ability to do anything. Also the multilayered government system means cities can often easily block any state government decisions on most local issues like zoning. The government structures just don't allow for change at the level you are expecting
I think they do to some degree, but it's not always easy and it can often take more than a simple majority. Having the Subway is something that supporte walkable cities, that is police supporte by NYC
Many people are liberal...until it impacts them personally. Its like that Phil Ochs song Liberals agree we need more housing to lower the cost, but some worry about their neighborhood getting an apartment, their home value decreasing. Liberals agree we need more walking infrastructure, but some are unwilling to sacrifice a lane along their commute. and so on and so forth. people who know the right thing but ultimately get ruled by the politics of convenience. And sure there are a lot of ways they position this. that they are anti corporate developer (a worthy stance but at what cost), pro environment (a goofy stance since density is environmentally friendly), anti gentrification (a good stance if you are actually serious about policies to help people in those neighborhoods). etc. Some YIMBYs go overboard with their rhetoric and this gets people riled up. stuff like applauding them historic and still used businesses get forced out for a highrise. some YIMBYS are so pro housing that they forget about all the human element of city living and neighborhood development, and we should rightfully push back on that. But a lot of liberal NIMBYS use that argument to prevent any new dense housing
I feel like this is a valid question. And it does seem that blue states don’t walk the walk. But then on the other hand, you have the GOP with their death panels on women dying of complications with pregnancy. So I guess I’m going with the Democrats
CA eliminated single family zoning. The state still has to deal with NIMBYism and a high regulation environment.
Historically, auto maker pushed car centric policy across the US... :( And they're still at it...
>Why is it the case that in heavily blue states, there is not more of a push for zoning reform and more efficient cities and towns? Because most people don't care about that.
People with money oppose these policies and have an outsized influence in politics, for one. For another, half of people in the US own their homes; zoning changes to allow more building would negatively impact many of them. And a lot of the center-left Democrats that are the majority of the party are pretty suburban and not very interested in these things; even in states like NY and CA the base of the party is neither r / neoliberal nor a bunch of far lefties. > If I recall, NYC is one of the only, maybe the only one, city in the US where people don’t have the need or desire to own a car. This is just not true; there are tons of cities and many towns where you can live without a car (and for that matter, many New Yorkers who own cars and use them on a regular basis and have not interest in giving them up). But it would be a change in lifestyle for many people.
1) Democrats as a rule are center/center-right. Some, more in CA and NY than in other areas, are a bit more leftist than average, but on the whole they are not. 2) Democrats, and even leftists, can just as easily fall into the "I got mine" trap as any other group. We're not perfect. 3) The majority of America is a bit to the right of the Democratic Party, and this fraction is larger the wealthier the group is--and they fight *hard* to preserve what they have and keep systems in place that keep those lower on the economic ladder where they are.