cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/23066989
If the US got rid of zoning laws our cities wouldn’t look like Tokyo, they’d look like Dallas. And believe me, one Dallas is more than enough.
…well everything folks have lamented about dallas is still true, but it’s not the result of unregulated development…
I think the only rule they had when “planning” Dallas was “there are no rules”. Zero zoning rules means one giant skyscraper in the middle of a mile of strip malls, multiple city “centers”, vast areas of it are competely unwalkable due to lack of sidewalks and/or what are basically highways running through them, and no mass transit to speak of. It’s like they took 5 shitty, small cities and glued them together with more shitty city material.
I’m in Dallas and it fucking sucks, tons of suburban sprawl, tons of roads but public transit is barely functional and hard to design efficiently, a lot of the roads don’t even have sidewalks or they just randomly end, the roads are designed in a way that promotes aggressive driving making it even more dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians, the local business scene here is depressing outside of restaurants and entertainment but there’s like 20 Walmarts.
