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> an 80-story apartment tower

If this is financially viable, that land must be worth a ton. Retiree should sell the property and stop monopolizing such valuable land. They'll have plenty of funds to use to move elsewhere

> a supervised injection place for IV drug users

Very few people want one of these built near them, which itself causes huge societal problems. We'd be better off in aggregate if more services for the poor could be built.

>an organometalic peroxide production plant, a hog farm, and a tire recycling plant

Unlikely to be built on expensive residential land, but if they were it would help fight climate change by reducing commute times, since employees can now live nearby. The existence of actual property rights allows ample housing to be built in this high-demand area




Wait for gas stations to be built on either side of your home in 'no zoning laws' suburb, wherein you lose 50% of your house price and can't afford to move out, and have to live with that as you become enlightened with respect to zoning laws.

The real prospects of the lack of zoning is something that nobody wants, which is why literally every civil place in the world has zoning.

The failure in the 'property rights' argument is that what's built on one property affects the other - there are externalizations.

What is built on one plot, affects the materiality (and value) of the others.

These arguments exist only on HN and other boards, thankfully.


Yes, zoning is used to insulate and even inflate the local property market and preserve home values; no that doesn’t make it morally justifiable to tell your neighbors how they can use their property.


> The real prospects of the lack of zoning is something that nobody wants, which is why literally every civil place in the world has zoning.

Calling Houston uncivil is a subjective judgement I can’t objectively falsify, and so is calling its residents “nobody”, but the latter act strikes me as ironically uncivil, and IMO not in line with https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#comments.


What about people who would on purpose devalue land- buying a plot and putting say garbage recycling. In order to buy up local area that would plummet in value.




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