The reasonable justification is government builds public infrastructure like schools, highways, and subways based on assumptions about use and population density. It’s much harder and more expensive to have reasonable infrastructure if you can’t make accurate predictions.

The de facto justification is indirect negative externalities exist like traffic congestion. Also known as F U I got mine.

With uses segregated, the "reasonable" argument does not make sense to me: infrastructure will have to be maximized because there will be big migrations of people based on normal use times like going to work. You need twice as much parking, twice as much freeway throughput.

Don’t just think in terms of low density around current American cities.

Plopping down a subdivisions in a sleepy county can quickly overwhelm local school systems, sewage treatment, etc. Even just 7% annual growth doubles the local population every decade which requires incredible and increasing investments in infrastructure. Slowing that down slightly is hardly unreasonable and it can help avoid expensive and damaging boom / bust cycles.

> Get rid of all zoning that’s unrelated to pollution

I would still be skeptical of this since I've learned the racial views of many famous environmental figures (like John Miur) and the various organizations brought up in their wake. Obviously correlation != causation but check out the trajectories and intersection between the usage of "segregationist" and "environmentalist" in American English publications. They cross over right around the time of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (1973):

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=gentrification...

(Sorry for gross huge URL. You might have to focus the input box and hit Enter to see the results. Here's a screenshot otherwise: https://i.imgur.com/kP8ugvH.png )

Opening a chicken farm or leather tannery in a residential neighborhood sounds great.

You're replying to someone that specifically mentioned pollution as a reason to keep certain uses in different zones. Did they edit their comment?

Extreme examples. In reality you’ll see more service industry like bodega, accounting, cafe, etc

If it were possible, it would produce far better outcomes than what we are currently seeing in SF. No chicken farmer or tanner could afford to build in SF, so that’s not much of a concern. And it would mean a far more diverse housing supply than what we currently have.

Even without zoning, it doesn't make economic sense to start a farm in a residential area.

My town in MA has a turkey farm with a couple barns in basically a residential area. But then it's historically a fairly rural farm town.

Yeah, but being allowed to have a couple chickens on your small plot is an example of allowing sustainable and relatively poor living. Can't have that! We want you supporting your local supermarket instead! The one that delivered that egg from that licensed farm 200km away in the middle of nowhere.

California has more same regulations on backyard chickens than the rural town I’m now in which requires a $50 license per hen, max three.

Though you can move just outside town if you want chickens I guess.

It has worked pretty well for Houston. Houston is as close to free market as you can get. It helps that much of what people call Houston isn't actually in any city boundary.

Genuinely curious as to how much time you have lived or worked in Houston ?

I found many pieces of it - some of which were directly related to lack of zoning - to be aesthetic disasters.

There seems to be a conception that support of zoning, and things like it, need be grounded in some scientific public-good maximalism that probably doesn't exist.

I don't feel bound by that at all.

The reason I am against ad-hoc liquor stores being run from a walled in front porch of a single-family home converted (badly) to a duplex[1] is because I dislike them aesthetically.

[1] Houston, circa 1999.

It's easy to value things like aesthetics when you've got yours. Rents are taxing people out onto the streets and raising the cost of everything, but heaven forbid we offend any NIMBY's personal aesthetic tastes.

I grew up in Houston.

The general idea is that city planners prioritize aesthetics over their residents being able to afford housing.

Except for the massive spread paved over most of the marshland and waterways in the area. Resulting in much of the city being under water (literally) for days in 2017 when a class 1 hurricane, which is pretty common, hit the area.

"Go further. Get rid of all zoning that’s unrelated to pollution of some kind or strictly a safety issue."

I keep wondering: How soon until someone proposes that building codes drive up housing prices and that code enforcement unfairly impacts PoC ?

It seems outlandish but ... part of me thinks it's just a matter of time.

We have honest-to-god oil derricks right in the middle of residential neighborhoods in Los Angeles. They even pump oil directly from a school campus in Beverly Hills.

But fourplexes? Not a chance.

Well my neighbor works in construction and would park several of his giant dump trucks in the street parking and the crew would gather outside every morning making a ruckus while leaving for the day. It was terrible and I was glad the code department put a stop to that and made every person in that neighborhood happy.

This reasoning is exactly why I stopped being a libertarian, the free market has no recourse mechanisms for actors making peoples lives worse.

> This reasoning is exactly why I stopped being a libertarian, the free market has no recourse mechanisms for actors making peoples lives worse.

Nuisance law is a recourse mechanism in the case you point out, and is included in any reasonable notion of "free market". (In the more radical notions of libertarianism, you and the other guy would simply submit the dispute to a mutually-trusted outside arbitrator, with a voluntary agreement to abide by the arbitrator's ruling.)

Of course we did. He told us to “suck an egg”. Will probably always remember that phrase now.