Comment by Hammershaft
2 days ago
Many leftists have a problem with zoning deregulation.
Housing supply is the biggest economic problem that regular people face.
Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson did not bring us Joe Biden, Ezra became one of the most critical mainstream journalists of Biden. Their politics are meaningfully different.
> Many leftists have a problem with zoning deregulation.
I've been in leftist housing advocacy circles. I studied urban planning.
1) Every leftist I know who cares about housing hates euclidean zoning
2) Every leftist I know who cares about housing hates down-zoning
3) Every urban planning class I took said that euclidean zoning is bad
Euclidean zoning is the principle land use regulation in the United States because it is supported by powerful people, landowners and yes property developers (who are also almost always land speculators.)
Thompson and Klein misrepresent euclidean zoning as a leftist project and then set it up as a wicker man to stuff with all the environmental and labor protections they want to torch.
I live and am politically active in a front-line municipality for these issues (Oak Park, IL --- the actual redlining bastion of the western suburbs, a 4.5 square mile gravity well for Cook County school funding so egregious it was one of the first examples in Johnny Harris's NYT "Blue States, You're The Problem video) and I'm telling you, straight out, leftist defenses of existing zoning rules are a very real thing. In fact, where I live, they are the entire defense of those zoning rules: progressives have a supermajority of the board.
Leftists are not solely or distinctively responsible for exclusionary zoning and housing restriction in the US. Nationally, they're not even the biggest problem. But in many jurisdictions, places that should be the vanguards and test cases for housing reform, they are the controlling factor.
Which is why Derek Thompson addresses them so directly. What would be the point of aiming these criticisms at Republican-controlled municipalities? They don't share these values to begin with! They're not listening!
Right now, we have two parties actively propping up home values and the interests of the upper middle class. Klein and Thompson propose: what if on this issue we had two parties?
I think that conflating "blue state" with leftist is incorrect. "Blue state" confidently implies "centrist" and "not too much on the right". It does include also leftists, but not just them.
The parties are asymmetric. "Red state" implies very much on the right and is much more radicalized then democrats. But democrats themselves are centrists and unlike the republicans, tend to push away more radical parts.
I guarantee you all your Oak Park neighbors are the type who were With Hillary in 2016 (probably calling Bernie a sexist) and voted for Biden and against progressive income tax in 2020. They are not leftists. You seem to be having some trouble understanding the difference between democrats, liberals, and leftists.
T&K are fundamentally dishonest about the role of euclidean zoning in american cities, who supports it and why it's so powerful. Their basic project is to strip environmental and labor protections by tying them to euclidean zoning and saying "it's all the same."
And by the way, they may get their way (Newsom is already forcing repeals of environmental protections in California while toasting Klein) but at the end of the day euclidean zoning will still be around, because it is supported by people who are way too powerful.
Another by the way: I remember fighting the big Chicago rezoning in 2004. They had us chasing our tails by trying to double the parking requirements and letting us fight to get them back down to where they were in the old code, feeling like we won a big victory.
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