We need blanket legislation outlawing the notion that by virtue of purchasing a plot of land one is also purchasing control over everything visible from said plot at the time of purchase.
So basically, we need to legally mandate that the only way for people to ensure that they have basic things like sunlight and not staring into a brick wall - or perhaps worse, having an endless parade of other people staring into their rooms and garden from the new multi-story art gallery across the street - is via sprawl that makes existing suburbia look positively compact?
The problem with this kind of thinking is that the denser housing is, the more its livability relies on things outside of the homeowners' direct ownership and control. So long as YIMBYs keep pushing this idea that keeping access to things like sunlight cannot be a shared act, it doesn't matter how many pretty drawings of wide sunlit boulevards of townhouses or towers in parks they produce to claim that density doesn't have to mean dark, dystopian hellscape - because the moment there's money in it, someone can just slap a big tall building right in one of those crucial empty spaces, and according to the YIMBYs the people affected would have no right to complain because they didn't personally and individually own them.
In most cases this really isn’t a problem though. The fantasy of “big tall buildings” being slapped everywhere is just that. NIMBYs are fully mobilized just to stop stuff like duplexes, townhomes, or the neighbor putting a pop-up 4th story on their existing row house, not imaginary 100-story skyscrapers going up in the middle of a suburb.
The standard solution to this is called an easement, which basically means I own the air rights over your property so that I can ensure my views are unobstructed.
Getting rid of the idea of owning the neighbors airspace entails figuring out how to fairly allocate easements that generally don't currently exist because of legacy reasons.
The issue (from a government perspective) with easements as opposed to zoning is that cities won't profit (as much) off the sale of easements. Governments make a lot of money from development, and they're not about to give it up.
Have you been to NYC? Or Tokyo? Or Singapore? Have you ever lived in a dense city before? These things just don't happen.
Developers a profit motived and are very aware of what sells and what doesn't. There are a million mechanisms by which we can avoid having a single story house surrounded by skyscrapers.
Counterpoint - Melbourne CBD. Jampacked full of enormous residential towers that are cheaply/poorly designed, far too close together, offer zero amenities and that block out all sunlight.
I used to be in favour of laxer planning regulations until I moved to Melbourne. A lassez faire approach just doesn’t work.
Indeed. We have people who are suing their neighbors who grew large pine trees in a forested area because it disrupted someone's view. I'm not even sure if the trees in question were planted or just allowed to grow.
What you mention is a different scenario from a developer building an 8-story complex next to a 2-story SFH, and it's reasonable to think we (society) could treat them differently if we so chose.
What you are talking about has absolutely nothing to do with the article. The proposal says that there should be a maximum of 4 units (not stories) per lot plus an additional 2 units if those two units are rented out as affordable housing. The article shows that the neighborhood already has a 6 unit building with 3 stories. It's absolutely nothing new.
Yes, if you give people infinite control over everything visible from their houses, they can build a radio telescope and control half the universe. On the other hand, your proposal is too radical, because I feel like I have a legitimate interest in not getting boxed in by several 100-foot walls spraypainted with obscenities and built one inch away from my property line, lit with daylight-strength spotlights at all hours of the night like that one Mormon temple. There has to be a reasonable middle ground between no control and infinite control.
If you have a legitimate interest, why not buy out the block yourself and live in your own little Shangri La? Otherwise, you are asking the government to subsidize your lifestyle preferentially over that of your neighbors. Believe it or not, the people living in the apartment next door with the spotlights are your neighbors too.
Agreed on the "view" aspect, but what about solar? If I build a house that gets X % of its electrical energy from the PV panels I install, and then my neighbor constructs something which blocks most of the incident sunlight, how does that work?
As a matter of fact, once upon a time, there was a Supreme Court decision limiting property owners' claim on the airspace above their land. Someone was actually trying to ban planes from flying over their house.
> We need blanket legislation outlawing the notion that by virtue of purchasing a plot of land one is also purchasing control over everything visible from said plot at the time of purchase.
We already have that, in the form of urban planning. There are professionals in charge of ensuring everyone's rights are respected by defining and upholding an urban plan and construction regulation.
We need blanket legislation outlawing the notion that by virtue of purchasing a plot of land one is also purchasing control over everything visible from said plot at the time of purchase.