New Zealand’s Legalization of Incremental Housing Is Bearing Fruit
New Zealand’s Legalization of Incremental Housing Is Bearing Fruit
New Zealand has proven what stateside housing advocates have been theorizing for years: Loosening restrictive zoning rules can increase housing supply and stabilize rents.
It's my opinion that anyone who thought about upzoning logically for two minutes would come to the conclusion that it is necessary to substantially increase housing supply without also needing to substantially increase infrastructure. I'm glad to see the results are starting to be noticed.
That sounds like making decisions based on the good of all, instead of me in particular. Sounds like a slippery slope.
Yeah increasing single family to 1-4 family isn't going to affect the neighborhood fabric that much, especially if you consider that it's literally just not banning slightly higher density structures
The thing I dislike about high density housing is the lack of trees. Some thought needs to be put into this if it is the path we are going to travel
Yeah, you need coordinated planning, e.g. careful zoning so that there are enough shops, public transport links, etc. in each neighbourhood.
That said, this article is mostly about slightly increasing density to allow townhouses etc., which is still generally low density (not even medium density). Plenty of these places still have yards, gardens, even lawns. We've just traditionally built way way too low density. There's no good argument not too increase our density to those minimal levels, given the problems we face in pretty much every city in NZ. Any opposition is basically pure nimby-ism.
The space for trees is where the road is. Reduce the lane width and curbside parking and you have plenty of space for greenery along the street. Just take a look at some streets in Amsterdam.
The beauty of high density housing is it takes up a lot less room and should leave land for green spaces. If we're no all living in a suburban hellscape a hopefully more people are walking to shrink roads there's more room for parks and trees.
It shouldn't be this way if done right. High density housing should make room for lots of parks and green space, green courtyards, etc.
So glad to see our city planners being praised by Chuck's outlet. I've followed Strong Towns for a few years now and they really are beating the drum for how we should build urban settlements in the future.
It's strange to me how rare stories like this to the tone of "nz is doing good things actually" are in our national media outlets. Negative stories get more clicks I guess, but I wonder how that warps peoples' perceptions.