Thank God for grandfathering

Matt Iglesias is usually a good writer and investigative journalist. But he lost me right away on this one by calling Somerville a town.

That's not a good argument to remove the existing zoning. The zoning was designed to affect future developments to help preserve some amount of open space in an area that doesn't often have much. That something was built a certain way in the past doesn't mean future developments need to be built the same way.

The existing neighborhoods can usually still be rebuilt to their non conforming nature, so it's a spurious argument at best. Many towns have added zoning over the years that makes older housing nonconforming. When towns add zoning and the age of the housing stock determines the amount of those non conforming buildings. If places decide that they don't want more density, they write zoning that limits future development.

The globe ran a very recent article that suggested new housing often just makes places denser, but does not reduce housing costs.

This is why we need zoning reform and why development slowed to a snails pace compared to what it was prior to the existence of zoning.

Here's a Globe article explaining how new housing doesn't reduce housing costs, but makes areas denser.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/06/15/why-more-housing-won-make...

The author of this piece has written in the past advocating to do away with most zoning and let people build what they want, which is not a realistic or desirable solution for most areas. The lack of zoning won't make a place a better one overall.

There's no good reason to believe that removing zoning would recreate those original neighborhoods anyway. When given the chance to develop they certainly don't build as they did in those old neighborhoods. It's basically just advocating for rampant development without sensible planning.