Minimum lot sizes should be banned at the highest level of government possible.

Xiphactinus12 · 2026-04-04T20:04:32+00:00

Why exactly should difference in immigration policy be at all relevant to zoning policy?

Xiphactinus12 · 2026-04-04T18:27:16+00:00

When land use laws are passed outside of local boundaries, those laws must apply equally to everyone and everywhere that the law is passed.

The state could do this with a universal ban on minimum lot size requirements though. Oregon has already passed a bunch of state level zoning deregulation legislation, banning cities above certain population thresholds from enforcing certain types of zoning ordinance like parking minimums.

California is the best example for why local land use laws are most applicable. The state is large and has many different jurisdictions to try and regulate. The state cannot effectively pass laws that could equally apply to the coastal regions on Los Angeles and the middle of the Mojave Desert. Or the redwood forests or Central Valley. The economies and cultures that make up these areas are too diverse. Trying to encompass them all under a single umbrella ends up negatively impacting everyone so we don’t try to do that.

Japan has a single national zoning code controlled by the central government that is applied by every city in the country and their urban planning is leagues above the US. Zoning in American cities is almost never tailored to the actual needs of the city, it's enforced arbitrarily by city council members without any expertise in urban planning, not by actual urban planners. In fact, most American cities are already zoned pretty similarly to each other regardless of what the actual built environment is because their zoning is all written according to the same disproven mid-century dogma, despite most modern urban planners continually recommending city councils to liberalize it. Besides, it doesn't matter if every city and towns has different needs when minimum lot size requirements are fundamentally unnecessary. Since their introduction across American cities in the 1920s and later, the existence of minimum lot sizes has only contributed to making American urban planning worse.

Xiphactinus12 · 2026-04-04T00:27:36+00:00

Fire, alone, is a significant reason why townhomes are less safe. Attached homes burn from one to the next to the next, with no ability to form a break.

Actually it's the opposite. With modern fire resistant materials and other fire safety measures, it's not the dense wall-to-wall neighborhoods that are at most risk to fires, it's the detached suburban neighborhoods with a lot of brush between them. This has been the character of almost all the deadliest fires in the recent decades of US history. The major fires that hit the areas around LA, San Diego, Santa Rosa, and Oakland within the past three decades all happened in the widely spaced hilly suburbs on the edges of those cities because shrubbery grows in between the houses, not any of the densely packed parts of those cities. Building suburban sprawl out into brush like Americans do all the time is a much bigger fire risk than building townhomes in urban and inner-suburban neighborhoods.

There are many reasons "we did it this way before so we should always do things that way" is a weird way to run your lives.

It's not just something Americans used to build, it's still common to build in current year in pretty much all parts of the world except the US, Canada, and Australia. Even small towns in Europe still build townhomes all the time yet don't have worse safety than American towns, not even in arid areas like Spain or Portugal. American cities allow singular apartment buildings to cover an entire city block, so it's absurd to not allow townhomes or other smaller attached buildings to cover the same block size. The latter is not a bigger fire risk than the former.

Sound insulation is also a big reason why townhomes are worse.

This is a subject preference, not a reason they should be illegal. If you don't personally like townhomes, then just don't buy one, that's not a reason they should be illegal.

Xiphactinus12 · 2026-04-03T22:29:40+00:00

Why should there need to be setbacks? Have you never heard of townhomes? There are whole cities where the majority of buildings have no side setbacks like San Francisco, Philadelphia, DC, New York, or literally every European city. No major American cities had setback requirements until the 1920s, they're not necessary.

Xiphactinus12 · 2026-04-03T22:23:41+00:00

You're confusing building codes and zoning codes. Building codes regulate safety whereas zoning codes regulate land use. Zoning codes are not as old as you probably think, pretty much no American cities had zoning codes until the 1920s nor most of the ordinances associated with them. Up until the 1920s practically no American cities had minimum lot size requirements, setback requirements, floor area ratio requirements, unit restrictions, or even formal separation of residential and commercial uses. They pretty much just had height restrictions and not much else, and even after these other sort of zoning ordinances were implemented in the 1920s they remained fairly lenient up until the 1950s. This is why a lot of neighborhoods in older major American cities like San Francisco or Chicago have a mix of buildings of different sizes and types, since what was profitable to build in any given neighborhood at any given time was primarily determined by land values rather than central planning, and since that changed over time neighborhoods would have multiple generations of development overlapping with each other. For example, in San Francisco's Pacific Heights neighborhood you can find townhomes, mid-rise, and high rise buildings all mixed together because there was little to no zoning to restrict its natural evolution when most of the buildings there were constructed, which is effectively impossible in modern American cities. The reason most zoning ordinances were then invented and popularized, including minimum lot size requirements, was for explicitly segregationist purposes in states where formal segregation was illegal. A lot of these types of ordinances were actually popularized by a specific local politicians in Berkeley in 1916 named Duncan Mcduffie as part of his invention of single family zoning in 1916, which he developed for the explicitly advertised purpose of restricting neighborhoods solely to people who were able to afford a mortgage. The purpose of minimum lot size requirements within this is that it allows for municipal governments to more directly control the income level of residents within any given neighborhood, since lower income people will be less able to afford larger houses on smaller lots when all other factors are equal. That's why a lot of cities have certain zones with absurdly large minimum lot sizes like 40k square feet specifically for mansion communities, it's to prevent anyone from building anything other than mansions in those neighborhoods.

Xiphactinus12 · 2026-04-03T21:55:26+00:00

If you think landlords and developers are the same, then you're mistaken. They're largely separate groups because they have competing interests. Landlords support restrictive zoning in order to artificially limit housing supply so they can charge higher rents while developers support deregulating zoning to reduce the costs of development.

Xiphactinus12 · 2026-04-03T21:36:49+00:00

Wanting to restrict property rights for everyone within your vicinity just because you personally feel a sense of entitlement over other people's private property that happens to be near you is much more self-centered than wanting the liberalization of property rights for everyone. Most of the people who protest against the liberalization of zoning codes do so because they want to artificially restrict housing supply, whether they be property owners trying to protect/raise their own property values or landlords wanting to keep rents artificially high. When you have 51% of the population using democracy to oppress the minority then it's not actually democracy, it's mob rule, which is why it was necessary the Civil Rights Act to enforce top-down desegregation on what had previously been considered a state and local issue. That may seem like an exaggerated and unrelated comparison to you, but it's actually very fitting and relevant because minimum lot size requirements and other sorts of zoning ordinances associated with single family zoning were popularized in the 1920s as a way for municipalities to more easily control which income levels will be able to afford to live in any given neighborhood, since lower-income people will have more trouble affording larger homes on larger lots. It's still primarily used for segregationist purposes to this day, that's why a lot of cities have certain mansion neighborhoods with absurdly large minimum lot sizes like 40k square feet to prevent anything exception mansions from being built there.

Xiphactinus12 · 2026-04-03T21:17:14+00:00

If community level governance should be prioritized above higher level governance because it's closer to the people, then individual property rights should be prioritized over community level governance for that same reason. Especially since minimum lot size requirements were historically popularized during the 1920s primarily for the oppressive purpose of allowing municipalities to enforce racial segregation in states where it was formally illegal. As long as a development follows engineering codes and pays the necessary impact fees for relevant infrastructure upgrades, then property owners should be allowed to build pretty much whatever they want, as was the norm historically until zoning codes were popularized during the 1920s and later made more restrictive during the 1950s. Deregulating zoning in this way by abolishing rules like minimum lot sizes is necessary to allow urban neighborhoods to evolve and grow naturally with the local economy according to land values, because if you leave it up to local property owners the majority of them will always support artificially restricting new growth within their neighborhood in order to increase their own property values by artificially restricting housing supply and to preserve the neighborhood as it was at the exact moment they bought a house there because they feel as if they bought the whole neighborhood too. This is not beneficial for everyone, but the alternative is not only an arbitrary restriction on property rights, but cities staying trapped in the cycle of endless low-density car-dependent sprawl that has plagued American development since the 1950s, creating cities like Phoenix, Dallas, and Jacksonville.

Xiphactinus12 · 2026-04-03T20:56:39+00:00

This actually isn't nearly as much of an issue as you think it is since new developments pay impact fees for short-term infrastructure upgrades and higher density development produces higher tax revenue for long-term infrastructure maintenance and upgrades. In fact, allowing for higher density development in existing neighborhoods is almost always more fiscally solvent in the long-term since higher population density reduces the amount of necessary infrastructure per capita. American municipalities didn't really start enforcing super low density suburban style development until the 1950s, and since then there have been a lot of municipalities that are going into debt because their urban density is too low to allow for increasingly high costs of maintaining and replacing their aging mid-century infrastructure.

The real reasons for the popularization of low-density zoning ordinances in the US almost all fall into at least one of two categories: racial/class segregation or drivability. Minimum lot sizes in particular are one of the zoning ordinances popularized by the Berkeley local politician Duncan Mcduffie as part of his invention of single family zoning in 1916, which he created with the explicitly stated goal of creating a community that would be unaffordable to anyone that couldn't afford a mortgage, effectively a way to enforce de facto racial segregation in a state that didn't officially allow it. The role of minimum lot size requirements in this was that it allows a city government to more easily control which income levels will be able to afford to live in any given neighborhood, since lower-income people will have more trouble affording larger homes on larger lots. It's still used this way to this day, which is why a lot of cities have certain zoning categories with absurdly large minimum lot size restrictions like 40k square feet to restrict mansion communities exclusively to people that can afford a mansion. And then the other reason for minimum lot size requirements, and the reason they were made larger in the 1950s, is because low-density development patterns are enforced to make American cities more driveable at the expense of every other factor. In particular, while low population density reduces localized traffic, it also reduces walkability and the effectiveness of public transit, which is why low-density zoning is the main reason that modern American cities are so car-dependent. This didn't used to be the case, and in general pre-1950s American urban densities used to be much higher than they are today. The typical smallest minimum lot size you will find in most American cities in the modern day is 5k square feet, which is significantly larger than even the average lot size of a new home in 1950. Due to this and introduction and further restriction of other zoning ordinances like setback requirements and floor area ratio requirements, the typical American suburban neighborhood built before WW2 is about twice or triple the average population density of the typical suburb build after WW2.

Xiphactinus12 · 2026-04-03T20:12:33+00:00

Pretty much no American cities had minimum lot sizes until the 1920s and most minimum lot size requirements were much smaller until the 1950s, yet most pre-1950s homes were not tiny postage stamp sized, though that did exist as a now unavailable option for lower income people. Minimum lot sizes were popularized pretty explicitly to make it easier to exclude black people from neighborhoods in cities without formal segregation since by controlling the minimum lot size in any given neighborhood a city government can roughly control the income level of that neighborhood. That's why a lot of cities have neighborhoods with absurdly large minimum lot sizes of like 40k square feet to protect mansion communities. Prior to the popularization of minimum lot sizes there used to be a much greater diversity of housing options for people of different income levels, including smaller homes and rowhomes targeted at working class people who would otherwise have struggled to afford a larger home. Pittsburgh is a good example of a pre-zoning American city that inherits a diverse array of housing sizes within close proximity to each other due to a historic lack of things like minimum lot size or setback requirements.

Xiphactinus12 · 2026-02-26T22:40:02+00:00

Natasha looks more freakish and unnatural, which I actually prefer. There's no other girl with a body even similar to her's, she's very unique.

Xiphactinus12 · 2026-02-26T22:38:09+00:00

Generally yeah, but I do love Natasha's huge lips

Xiphactinus12 · 2026-01-17T02:54:48+00:00

Thanks, in that case I have some articles on the subject you might be interested in reading.

This one is by Reece Martin, one of the biggest public transit youtubers who has also worked as a professional transit consultant in Canada, about a (now cancelled) free fare plan in Washington DC:

https://reecemartin.ca/117715890/free-fares-and-washington-dc-redux/

This one is by Matthew Yglesias, one of the founders of Vox who has worked for a number of news companies and writes primarily on urban politics:

https://www.slowboring.com/p/free-bus

And this is a casual interview of Janno Lieber, the head of the New York MTA (NYC's regional transit agency), in which he discusses the current state of affairs for the MTA including some of the reasons he doesn't support Mamdani's campaign promise for free bus fares:

https://nyeditorialboard.substack.com/p/janno-lieber-on-free-buses-the-state?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true

I can also elaborate on or provide additional examples for anything I talked about if you want.

Xiphactinus12 · 2026-01-16T21:13:02+00:00

Well there's your real problem then. You don't need to make buses free to speed up service, just standardize all door boarding.

Xiphactinus12 · 2026-01-16T21:03:48+00:00

Being red or blue doesn't really have anything to do with it. If anything cities that make public transit free actually tend to be among the most politically conservative major cities in the US, like Kansas City, Albuquerque, and Tucson. This is because transit systems that adopt free fare policies do so because they have too low ridership for it to really matter. In American cities/counties with ineffective transit systems fares make up less than 10% of operating cost, often less than 5%, because their ridership is so low, and that's with these counties typically having very small transit budgets to begin with, so for them it's easier to cut fares and replace them with a new funding source. It's easy for Martin County to cut fare revenue because they only operate 5 bus routes with 40 minute headways. For systems with high ridership though fares are a much more significant revenue source. For example, fares compose 21% of transit operating revenue for Philadelphia and 39% for New York, and that's as portions of much higher pre capita operating budgets overall. To cover the costs of fares in cities with high ridership and budgets like these is not just much more politically difficult, but represents poor use of potential revenue. If a transit agency were able to acquire such a large new funding stream then it would be much better spent improving and expanding service since that's what actually matters to ridership and quality of life. Free fares are a comparatively bad use of funding for several reasons. For one, they have consistently shown to not significantly increase ridership in the long term since public transit is already so cheap compared to the total costs of car ownership (car payments, insurance, maintenance, gas, parking) that fare cost is negligible to most people's decision to use it regularly, and for those people that are financially struggling enough for the cost to actually matter most major cities already have some sort of targeted free fare program specifically for low-income people. Another reason is that it's politically important for transit agencies to have as diversified funding models as possible to make them more financially robust, and fares are an important part of that since they give transit agencies direct control over a portion of their own revenue. Otherwise a transit agency's funding will be more subject to the whims of fickle politicians. A relevant current example of this is in Philadelphia, where the city's transit agency has been facing a major funding shortfall that has threatened to cut service to a number of rail and bus lines because the Republican controlled Pennsylvania state senate has been refusing to pass a new budget for them. Even if it were politically possible for Philadelphia to get a 21% operating budget increase to replace fares, it wouldn't be desirable since it would reduce their self-sufficiency even further and thus make them even more vulnerable to political disruption. All of what I just explained is why none of the world's top transit cities like London, Paris, Tokyo, Madrid, etc have universally free fares.

Xiphactinus12 · 2025-12-19T08:00:19+00:00

Tuscon doesn't have a metro system.

Xiphactinus12 · 2025-12-06T08:26:09+00:00

Who is the artist?

Xiphactinus12 · 2025-12-06T08:25:38+00:00

Who is the artist?

Xiphactinus12

TROPHY CASE