One other small note: incremental doesn’t necessarily mean steps of a fixed size, it means steps that make sense in context. That’s going to mean something like a 50-100% increase in units on a lot as a baseline, but it could be bigger.
For example in NY and SF there are plenty of old small buildings or vacant lots surrounded by towers. I think the next increment there is another tower. (Although holdouts and speculation can make that hard to pencil, which is a different issue.)
Speaking to SF since I lived there and am more familiar, the “big incremental” is more than just FiDi. All through Soma, mission, and Hayes Valley I think the logical next increment is replacing 2-3 story buildings with 5-8 story buildings. And along corridors like Divisadero or Geary, same thing.
But also, consider that something like half of SF’s land area is on the west side. Sunset, and Parkside are largely single family, even the Richmond is mostly small buildings. Adding something like one 2-4 unit building per block out there every year would be many thousands of new units per year, which would be meaningful!
But even more important, consider if you could add one unit to every lot in all of Daly City and South SF and San Mateo and so on all the way down the bay and back up the other side. That would be a *profound* change in supply, nearly doubling the housing supply in just the first wave.
Very fair point, Andrew. And I hope the omission of the "next incremental tower" isn't seen as misrepresenting the overall concept, which I think is generally good policy for a lot of places. That said, I think in high-opportunity single-family neighborhoods close to downtowns, "skip-level" zoning might be more immediately impactful. I'm imagining a neighborhood like mine in Central East Austin, which is literally in the shadow of downtown and still mostly single-family. Three units by right is great, but we could really use a lot more small apartment buildings, especially given that these neighborhoods are already gridded, walkable, and have some in-neighborhood commercial uses. Going from 1->3 is great, but with the permissions of multifamily zoning, you could easily fit 8- or 10-unit low-rise buildings on many infill lots, compatibly with the existing urban fabric. Given the slow pace of infill redevelopment, this strikes me as more bang for your buck. In
Austin, we've basically eliminated use zoning distinctions downtown and then incrementally upzoned everything else, but I think we need to skip-level the missing middle transect surrounding downtown to really achieve housing abundance.
I get that. I think from a physical planning point of view you are right.
The problems is, from a development project point of view, neighborhoods that end up with a big gap between present use (in east Austin, single family homes), and obvious market demand for future use (medium-large apartment buildings), the market gets very weird. You can end up stalling out as people speculate on the land and hold out for sky high prices. Then you end up with really difficult land assembly problems etc that make it hard to actually bring those bigger buildings to market. This can also lead to disinvestment and decline in the neighborhood as everyone knows all the existing buildings are bulldozer bait, so the logical thing to do is stop maintaining them.
This is a genuinely tricky problem, and I’m not sure if there’s “a solution,” but I do think that this problem is by far the worst when only one small area is upzoned (as that concentrates market pressure and makes the speculation / hold out problem worse). So the best thing we can do is “up zone everywhere” to distribute / reduce the speculation / hold out value.
I've been mulling this over since yesterday. I find your analysis compelling, yet facts on the ground in my neighborhood seem "weird" in a way that seems related to your argument but not necessarily in line with expectations.
For instance, since we've arrived in Austin, I've observed abandoned teardowns sitting next to million-dollar homes, as well as vacant lots lining what should be commercial corridors leading into downtown. These have been existing conditions for years, well before we arrived.
Until recently, you could build duplexes on the single-family lots and mixed-use 3-to-5-story buildings on the commercial corridors. Land prices soared under these conditions, in a political environment in which no upzonings were anticipated; according to infill developers I spoke with, the land prices made entitled projects increasingly difficult to pencil.
Austin's slew of recent reforms were not on anybody's radar; the political conditions changed rather abruptly, surprising even those of us working in this space. Incidentally, they were incremental in nature and citywide: all single-family lots went from 1 or 2 units to 3 by right; almost all commercial lots were liberated from heigh restrictions and eligible to participate in density bonus programs allowing for greater height and massing. These reforms arrived at a time when market conditions (rates, supply, valuations) had fundamentally changed, so not much is being built, and the holdout problem persists but in a seemingly non-speculative environment.
Been on vacation, but wanted to say this is well done. It will be confusing to many, though, who do not understand zoning as being about use segregation. In most states, the only legal authority communities have to adopt environmental regulations or address nuisances is the zoning authority. So, if you want to protect your streams with a buffer or require landscaping between uses that are not totally compatible, what you do will be called zoning. What you do if you want to exclude exurban sprawl with open space development regulations or want to exclude strip commercial with a form-based code will also be called zoning. YIMBYs need to get over the terminology and focus on the outcomes.
I will add, for those who might be interested, that what you say here has been anticipated. Land use lawyer and urban historian, John Reps, wrote an influential essay entitled "Requiem for Zoning" in 1969 and by the mid-70s creative planners were putting performance zoning systems in place here and there throughout the US. A few of those survive, though not always in the originally intended form. Most of those systems have been repealed or replaced with more conventional zoning that carried over some of the performance standards. Part of why that has happened is that NIMBYs do not like objective systems. They have to trade in emotion. Part is that administering performance zoning takes more talent and effort. The largest part, though, is that we live in a society that deludes itself into thinking there are simple answers.
Thanks for the comments, Lee. What you identify at the end, the emotional pull, is consistently the throughline in these debates...and I think you're right that it has permeated our culture more generally. I'm curious what you think would change the culture away from emotion-trading and and collective delusion.
Been meaning to get back to this excellent question, but I picked up COVID along the way and am just now past the brain fog it induces (in me, at least). There are 2 layers to this answer.
First, there are circumstances in which good collaborative planning processes like those I have been beginning to describe in my newsletter still work. That is not as true now as it was 30 years ago, but I'm working with a small town in a red state that is home to people with diverse opinions. When we're talking about infrastructure and how to pay for it, though, partisan positions get set aside. I have watched them work through"dog issues," which are the bane of every small town and other routine municipal business and at those moments you can't tell whose MAGA, whose in the middle, or whose a little progressive. They're aware of what they share. Within the scope of city business, I think they can work this way indefinitely.
I have seen that dynamic over and over again since I started seriously watching 50 years ago. Some communities are better at it than others (and the difference is always one of two things, partisanship or individual "axe-grinding"). I wrote a little more about this in the Town Meeting edition of my newsletter. But even in the polarized America of 2025, a lot of communities are capable of addressing the tangible issues of living together.
But then there is the second layer. And its hard even to know where to start. I am about to write a rant that will address some of this. Check my newsletter in a day or two. But what I will say to you here is that our ability to govern effectively and equitably (note that I do not include efficiently, govenance can be efficient, but that applies ONLY after the goals are clear) depends on the story we've been taught and that we are, mostly unconsciously living out. If our story is one of patriarchical competition and dominance that's what we're going to get. We may successfully address it on one issue, but the underlying myths are like those Whack-A-Gator games, the gators pop up everywhere no matter how hard you hammer them down at any one point.
You words, "collective delusion" point at this. But its not a delusion because it has such power in the real world. Its a story, really a myth. I called it the Narrative of Domination in an article in Mountain Journal a few years ago. I'll try adding a link below.
We're all emotional. Rationality is one tool for dealing with that condition, but its not the only one, or the most effective one. Donald Trump demonstrates this conclusively. People will not just tolerate things he does that they would never tolerate in their own child (at about age 3) they will adore it. That's because they;re seeking a strong father and our society's story about a strong father is what it is. To change the culture away from this, as you ask: We need a new story, one that will stick, a new myth.
We have examples of such myths. Examples from indigenous people who could not in the end, avoid conquest by the Narrative of Domination, but who still resist. But can we learn? I don't know.
But I hope this helps.
Assigned reading: If you haven't, it sounds to me like you are ready to read George Lakoff's The Political Mind.
I don't know if I can insert a live link in a comment, but here goes. You can always copy it in.
I appreciate the thoughtful comment and reading suggestions—thank you! I think there's definitely something to the power of narratives, and more broadly, it seems our politics have been dominated by negative stories. Something to chew on further... Meanwhile, I hope the Covid doesn't keep you down for too long. Feel better!
Love this! The foundation of modern zoning is that housing is incompatible with other housing, apartments are parasites in single-family neighborhoods.
Almost every expensive city in America had vast tracks of affordable housing in it. Just open up Zillow and look.
However, that housing is in “bad neighborhoods”.
We don’t really have a zoning problem per se. we have a “we need to segregate from the underclass” problem.
This can be done either through price (urban) or use restriction (suburbs, hoas). It’s worth noting that much new housing is in hoas which are private market driven zoning covenants.
Japan doesn’t have a big underclass problem, so it can operate in a different model.
The best way to get housing costs down would be improved public order and school choice. These would reduce the externalities of your Neighboors and make housing more affordable.
I agree that nuisance-based codes are a better way of doing what zoning was originally intended to do! What’s tricky about all of this is that a lot of the things that people care about the most (e.g. ugly buildings, annoying neighbors) are things that you can’t easily regulate, and other stuff like noise is really hard to enforce. And so you end up with hacky zoning that only sort of addresses the stuff that people care about and has a ton of other consequences (e.g. banning craft breweries, like you mentioned).
Great article. Just got back from Japan, and it is such a wonderful, compelling case study of what perfectly safe, livable, dynamic cities can look like with minimal, smart zoning.
Have you seen this Tokyo zoning explainer video? It’s a great short intro for people who haven’t been to Japan to better understand how this works and what the resulting cities look like.
One other small note: incremental doesn’t necessarily mean steps of a fixed size, it means steps that make sense in context. That’s going to mean something like a 50-100% increase in units on a lot as a baseline, but it could be bigger.
For example in NY and SF there are plenty of old small buildings or vacant lots surrounded by towers. I think the next increment there is another tower. (Although holdouts and speculation can make that hard to pencil, which is a different issue.)
Speaking to SF since I lived there and am more familiar, the “big incremental” is more than just FiDi. All through Soma, mission, and Hayes Valley I think the logical next increment is replacing 2-3 story buildings with 5-8 story buildings. And along corridors like Divisadero or Geary, same thing.
But also, consider that something like half of SF’s land area is on the west side. Sunset, and Parkside are largely single family, even the Richmond is mostly small buildings. Adding something like one 2-4 unit building per block out there every year would be many thousands of new units per year, which would be meaningful!
But even more important, consider if you could add one unit to every lot in all of Daly City and South SF and San Mateo and so on all the way down the bay and back up the other side. That would be a *profound* change in supply, nearly doubling the housing supply in just the first wave.
Very fair point, Andrew. And I hope the omission of the "next incremental tower" isn't seen as misrepresenting the overall concept, which I think is generally good policy for a lot of places. That said, I think in high-opportunity single-family neighborhoods close to downtowns, "skip-level" zoning might be more immediately impactful. I'm imagining a neighborhood like mine in Central East Austin, which is literally in the shadow of downtown and still mostly single-family. Three units by right is great, but we could really use a lot more small apartment buildings, especially given that these neighborhoods are already gridded, walkable, and have some in-neighborhood commercial uses. Going from 1->3 is great, but with the permissions of multifamily zoning, you could easily fit 8- or 10-unit low-rise buildings on many infill lots, compatibly with the existing urban fabric. Given the slow pace of infill redevelopment, this strikes me as more bang for your buck. In
Austin, we've basically eliminated use zoning distinctions downtown and then incrementally upzoned everything else, but I think we need to skip-level the missing middle transect surrounding downtown to really achieve housing abundance.
I get that. I think from a physical planning point of view you are right.
The problems is, from a development project point of view, neighborhoods that end up with a big gap between present use (in east Austin, single family homes), and obvious market demand for future use (medium-large apartment buildings), the market gets very weird. You can end up stalling out as people speculate on the land and hold out for sky high prices. Then you end up with really difficult land assembly problems etc that make it hard to actually bring those bigger buildings to market. This can also lead to disinvestment and decline in the neighborhood as everyone knows all the existing buildings are bulldozer bait, so the logical thing to do is stop maintaining them.
This is a genuinely tricky problem, and I’m not sure if there’s “a solution,” but I do think that this problem is by far the worst when only one small area is upzoned (as that concentrates market pressure and makes the speculation / hold out problem worse). So the best thing we can do is “up zone everywhere” to distribute / reduce the speculation / hold out value.
I've been mulling this over since yesterday. I find your analysis compelling, yet facts on the ground in my neighborhood seem "weird" in a way that seems related to your argument but not necessarily in line with expectations.
For instance, since we've arrived in Austin, I've observed abandoned teardowns sitting next to million-dollar homes, as well as vacant lots lining what should be commercial corridors leading into downtown. These have been existing conditions for years, well before we arrived.
Until recently, you could build duplexes on the single-family lots and mixed-use 3-to-5-story buildings on the commercial corridors. Land prices soared under these conditions, in a political environment in which no upzonings were anticipated; according to infill developers I spoke with, the land prices made entitled projects increasingly difficult to pencil.
Austin's slew of recent reforms were not on anybody's radar; the political conditions changed rather abruptly, surprising even those of us working in this space. Incidentally, they were incremental in nature and citywide: all single-family lots went from 1 or 2 units to 3 by right; almost all commercial lots were liberated from heigh restrictions and eligible to participate in density bonus programs allowing for greater height and massing. These reforms arrived at a time when market conditions (rates, supply, valuations) had fundamentally changed, so not much is being built, and the holdout problem persists but in a seemingly non-speculative environment.
How would you diagnose all that?
This was a well written and acutely necessary article. Thank you for writing it!
Thanks, AU!
Brilliant, Ryan! I have a draft in my notes of a very similar article, I might just link to this from now on instead. You nailed it :)
Thanks, Andrew—really appreciate that. Please do link. ;-)
Been on vacation, but wanted to say this is well done. It will be confusing to many, though, who do not understand zoning as being about use segregation. In most states, the only legal authority communities have to adopt environmental regulations or address nuisances is the zoning authority. So, if you want to protect your streams with a buffer or require landscaping between uses that are not totally compatible, what you do will be called zoning. What you do if you want to exclude exurban sprawl with open space development regulations or want to exclude strip commercial with a form-based code will also be called zoning. YIMBYs need to get over the terminology and focus on the outcomes.
I will add, for those who might be interested, that what you say here has been anticipated. Land use lawyer and urban historian, John Reps, wrote an influential essay entitled "Requiem for Zoning" in 1969 and by the mid-70s creative planners were putting performance zoning systems in place here and there throughout the US. A few of those survive, though not always in the originally intended form. Most of those systems have been repealed or replaced with more conventional zoning that carried over some of the performance standards. Part of why that has happened is that NIMBYs do not like objective systems. They have to trade in emotion. Part is that administering performance zoning takes more talent and effort. The largest part, though, is that we live in a society that deludes itself into thinking there are simple answers.
Thanks for the comments, Lee. What you identify at the end, the emotional pull, is consistently the throughline in these debates...and I think you're right that it has permeated our culture more generally. I'm curious what you think would change the culture away from emotion-trading and and collective delusion.
Been meaning to get back to this excellent question, but I picked up COVID along the way and am just now past the brain fog it induces (in me, at least). There are 2 layers to this answer.
First, there are circumstances in which good collaborative planning processes like those I have been beginning to describe in my newsletter still work. That is not as true now as it was 30 years ago, but I'm working with a small town in a red state that is home to people with diverse opinions. When we're talking about infrastructure and how to pay for it, though, partisan positions get set aside. I have watched them work through"dog issues," which are the bane of every small town and other routine municipal business and at those moments you can't tell whose MAGA, whose in the middle, or whose a little progressive. They're aware of what they share. Within the scope of city business, I think they can work this way indefinitely.
I have seen that dynamic over and over again since I started seriously watching 50 years ago. Some communities are better at it than others (and the difference is always one of two things, partisanship or individual "axe-grinding"). I wrote a little more about this in the Town Meeting edition of my newsletter. But even in the polarized America of 2025, a lot of communities are capable of addressing the tangible issues of living together.
But then there is the second layer. And its hard even to know where to start. I am about to write a rant that will address some of this. Check my newsletter in a day or two. But what I will say to you here is that our ability to govern effectively and equitably (note that I do not include efficiently, govenance can be efficient, but that applies ONLY after the goals are clear) depends on the story we've been taught and that we are, mostly unconsciously living out. If our story is one of patriarchical competition and dominance that's what we're going to get. We may successfully address it on one issue, but the underlying myths are like those Whack-A-Gator games, the gators pop up everywhere no matter how hard you hammer them down at any one point.
You words, "collective delusion" point at this. But its not a delusion because it has such power in the real world. Its a story, really a myth. I called it the Narrative of Domination in an article in Mountain Journal a few years ago. I'll try adding a link below.
We're all emotional. Rationality is one tool for dealing with that condition, but its not the only one, or the most effective one. Donald Trump demonstrates this conclusively. People will not just tolerate things he does that they would never tolerate in their own child (at about age 3) they will adore it. That's because they;re seeking a strong father and our society's story about a strong father is what it is. To change the culture away from this, as you ask: We need a new story, one that will stick, a new myth.
We have examples of such myths. Examples from indigenous people who could not in the end, avoid conquest by the Narrative of Domination, but who still resist. But can we learn? I don't know.
But I hope this helps.
Assigned reading: If you haven't, it sounds to me like you are ready to read George Lakoff's The Political Mind.
I don't know if I can insert a live link in a comment, but here goes. You can always copy it in.
https://mountainjournal.org/the-failures-and-limits-of-collaborative-conservation
I appreciate the thoughtful comment and reading suggestions—thank you! I think there's definitely something to the power of narratives, and more broadly, it seems our politics have been dominated by negative stories. Something to chew on further... Meanwhile, I hope the Covid doesn't keep you down for too long. Feel better!
Thanks, Ryan
Great article, as per usual, Ryan
Thanks, Ryan!
Love this! The foundation of modern zoning is that housing is incompatible with other housing, apartments are parasites in single-family neighborhoods.
I was trending along your line of thinking when I wrote this piece about zoning’s origins: https://jeremyl.substack.com/p/zoning-controls-your-life-and-it. But you summed up the solution perfectly
Thanks, Jeremy! Great article, by the way.
Almost every expensive city in America had vast tracks of affordable housing in it. Just open up Zillow and look.
However, that housing is in “bad neighborhoods”.
We don’t really have a zoning problem per se. we have a “we need to segregate from the underclass” problem.
This can be done either through price (urban) or use restriction (suburbs, hoas). It’s worth noting that much new housing is in hoas which are private market driven zoning covenants.
Japan doesn’t have a big underclass problem, so it can operate in a different model.
The best way to get housing costs down would be improved public order and school choice. These would reduce the externalities of your Neighboors and make housing more affordable.
I agree that nuisance-based codes are a better way of doing what zoning was originally intended to do! What’s tricky about all of this is that a lot of the things that people care about the most (e.g. ugly buildings, annoying neighbors) are things that you can’t easily regulate, and other stuff like noise is really hard to enforce. And so you end up with hacky zoning that only sort of addresses the stuff that people care about and has a ton of other consequences (e.g. banning craft breweries, like you mentioned).
Great article. Just got back from Japan, and it is such a wonderful, compelling case study of what perfectly safe, livable, dynamic cities can look like with minimal, smart zoning.
Have you seen this Tokyo zoning explainer video? It’s a great short intro for people who haven’t been to Japan to better understand how this works and what the resulting cities look like.
https://youtu.be/wfm2xCKOCNk?si=886W3fHyOBqFVy4v
Thank you, and thanks for sharing the video…I’ll check it out! All of this reminds me I’m overdue for a return visit.
You should so go! With your deeper understanding of cities you will notice so much, and have great material to write about!