We Regulate the Wrong Things
&gt; “It’s too tall” is a common refrain in public hearings to approve new construction, but I’m honestly puzzled by the obsession with the notion of a building’s height as a measure of compatibility with its surroundings. I think the importance of height in and of itself is vastly overstated.<p>That is true, height is often a bad proxy for some other quality you&#x27;re looking for and which could be solved in original ways besides height e.g. in the north east you&#x27;d want enough light to reach the street and avoid gloomy alleys, besides height you could manage it by removing wedges of the building (from a basic cuboid shape), or having a front courtyard or a large atrium, or yes height. Height also becomes a factor of the street width, narrower streets would tend to get shorter buildings.<p>Furthermore regulating height can be counter-productive: while you want to avoid excessive shade in the north-east, in the south-west you want to do the exact opposite, much like cities of northern africa or the middle east, for an arizonan or texan city to be walkable it needs shade and air flow rather than light: you need buildings tall enough that they protect pedestrians from the sun (without falling into gloom), but you also want them to guide and amplify the slightest breeze.<p>&gt; 3. Land Use<p>&gt; Segregation of uses is the most important of those features. The biggest factor that predicts walkability is the presence of actual destinations in walking distance of where people live. The postwar paradigm has been to rigidly control where commercial land uses can go and where they can’t, based on the premise that they are a nuisance in a residential neighborhood—bringing traffic, noise, and possibly crime. Yet all commercial uses are not created equal.<p>Many places segregate by <i>maximum nuisance</i> rather than specific land use: plots are give an maximum nuisance level, and businesses are charted according to the expected nuisance they produce. Anything below the plot&#x27;s MNL is allowed and thus your small corner shop or barbershop (low-nuisance businesses) can live in a &quot;residential&quot; area, but a nightclub or a machine shop probably can&#x27;t.