Apartments, the court warned, block the sun and air. They bring noise and traffic. They act as a parasite on single-family neighborhoods—“until, finally, the residential character of the neighborhood and its desirability as a place of detached residences are utterly destroyed.”
Today, the very density that the court scorned is viewed by environmentalists as an antidote to sprawling development patterns that feed gridlock and auto emissions. It’s viewed by planners as an essential condition to support public transit, and by economists as the best means of making high-cost cities more affordable.
Single-family zoning “means that everything else is banned,” said Scott Wiener, a California state senator, speaking this spring at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “Apartment buildings—banned. Senior housing—banned. Low-income housing, which is only multi-unit—banned. Student housing—banned.”
—Emily Badger & Quoctrung Bui, in “Cities Start to Question an American Ideal: A House With a Yard on Every Lot”
Published to write.house by Bix Frankonis. Comments and replies by email are welcome.