Do zoning laws give too much power to the people?

Interesting bloggingheads between Matthew Yglesias and Megan McArdle covering a range of topics, notably including zoning. That’s at the start.

They both agreed that most city-dwellers seem to like the benefits of high-density developments: more stores, low-income housing, transit, etc. However, they don’t want it right near them. Classical Not In My Backyard (Nimby) behavior. This kind of thing shows up even in liberal neighborhoods.

Yglesias proposes that part of the problem is the level of government, specifically zoning is far too atomized. It’s far too easy to make separate rules for your block than the rest of the area. Thus hypocrisy is really easy. So moving it to a slightly higher level of government will make it harder for each block/area to come up with rationalizations why they need special rules. I think a lot of the problem here might also be that its easy to make rules that affect current and future residents differently. For example, you can say ’no more houses’ right after your house gets built. So it’s easy to be harsh because you’re making rules for other people.

That said whole neighborhoods do make stupid decisions, College Park fought getting the Green Line for a while and Georgetown notoriously opposed getting a Metro stop (and has paid for it other since, ha ha).

Also, bizarrely, Gossip Girls, about a high class Manhattan school, apparently doesn’t have any Jews or even Catholics. (Despite the fact that apparently the Producer is Jewish). That just seems odd.