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Originally Posted by lio45
Really interesting thread BTW! Haven't even read all of it yet. The role that (inflexible, safety-obsessed) modern regulations play in the fact that no one can build "real" downtowns anymore is a topic that's interested me for years.
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I find the contradictions of conflicting priorities in urban planning quite interesting and I don't think the conversation generally gets as much attention as it should. Sometimes (not always) these regulations have good intentions, but the end result is often a very compromised built form that isn't what anyone really thinks is good. And even more importantly, we've made construction so onerous that property values are through the roof, and affordability is a huge problem.
If we got rid of a lot of these regulations (setbacks, height, parking etc) the result might be a little "messier", but I can't say I find the typical north American built form very desirable anyway, and the benefits of more construction, lower prices and more creativity would outweigh the costs.
The natural reaction of urbanist types when there is a problem of some sort in cities is more restriction. But the result of that is not that developers build the thing you want, they just can't build things you don't want, and where they do build it's a mutated version of what the market wants, squished into the limitations of city regulation. And what results is our garbage urban environment. The vibrant urban communities abroad were either built by rulers who had the power to demolish vast tracts of land and replace it with something else or were just the result of pure free markets - people building what they need where they want. Our cities are neither of those, and I don't think the model has been proven a success.