<story><title>The illegal city of Somerville</title><url>http://cityobservatory.org/the-illegal-city-of-somerville/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>thenewwazoo</author><text>I genuinely don&amp;#x27;t get the point. Of course the buildings aren&amp;#x27;t legal under current zoning laws. They weren&amp;#x27;t built under current zoning laws! We don&amp;#x27;t tear down every skyscraper whenever the earthquake requirements change. Nobody moves their house when the setback requirement goes from 8&amp;#x27; to 12&amp;#x27;. These kinds of articles are tautological.&lt;p&gt;edit: the article mentions &amp;quot;illegal neighborhoods and illegal houses&amp;quot; but doesn&amp;#x27;t say anything about the laws &lt;i&gt;when they were built&lt;/i&gt;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Lazare</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re missing the point.  What&amp;#x27;s being said is this:&lt;p&gt;1. People highly praise city&amp;#x2F;town&amp;#x2F;neighborhood X for its density, walkability, livibility, sustainability, and other quality of life elements.&lt;p&gt;2. That city&amp;#x2F;town&amp;#x2F;neighbourhood could not be built today because of laws which explicitly ban the things which make it so highly praised.  If it was destroyed in an earthquake, it couldn&amp;#x27;t be rebuilt in any form which shared the attributes which made it loved.&lt;p&gt;This isn&amp;#x27;t about earthquake strengthening; it&amp;#x27;s about density, parking, transport, multi-family dwellings, mixed-use neighborhoods, etc.  An ocean of ink has been spilled on the problems of suburbs full of single-family homes (and zero commercial presence), but our laws frequently &lt;i&gt;require&lt;/i&gt; that, regardless of the preferences of consumers.&lt;p&gt;(More generally:  The argument for zoning laws is that local government knows better than residents what the people &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; want, and what makes for a good city.  That does not seem to reflect reality.)</text></comment>
<story><title>The illegal city of Somerville</title><url>http://cityobservatory.org/the-illegal-city-of-somerville/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>thenewwazoo</author><text>I genuinely don&amp;#x27;t get the point. Of course the buildings aren&amp;#x27;t legal under current zoning laws. They weren&amp;#x27;t built under current zoning laws! We don&amp;#x27;t tear down every skyscraper whenever the earthquake requirements change. Nobody moves their house when the setback requirement goes from 8&amp;#x27; to 12&amp;#x27;. These kinds of articles are tautological.&lt;p&gt;edit: the article mentions &amp;quot;illegal neighborhoods and illegal houses&amp;quot; but doesn&amp;#x27;t say anything about the laws &lt;i&gt;when they were built&lt;/i&gt;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>graeme</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re focussing on a nit. The situation is not &amp;quot;the neighbourhood is generally fine, but would need some tweaks for the fire code&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The situation is: it&amp;#x27;s impossible to build a neighbourhood resembling somerville under current zoning laws.&lt;p&gt;I live in a prewar neighbourhood in Montreal. It&amp;#x27;s dense, beautiful, and loved by locals and tourists alike. If you could clone it and build it elsewhere, it would be worth trillions to cities across North America.&lt;p&gt;But it&amp;#x27;s illegal to build, because the streets are too narrow, there isn&amp;#x27;t enough parking, there is a mix of residential buildings and businesses, the buildings aren&amp;#x27;t set back far enough, and so on.</text></comment>