US Zoning Laws

Most cities have zoning that doesn't allow that kind of thing.

Zoning is already on the nuisance basis in many places in the US. It means local shops cannot pop up in residential neighborhoods if nobody wants to live near such a shop. If residents are fine with traffic, noise and pests they can vote for changing zoning on any lot to commercial. High density residential is almost the same, except there are also physical limitations of the infrastructure.

Its often bexaus eof zoning rules set by existing owners who dont want their neibhoood to change. Never mind that it makes little sense for single family housing only zoning to even exist in cities like SF.

The US has terrible zoning. Somewhere else often isn't any different.

Could be referring to onerous zoning laws that keep density down.

Houston has zoning if we define zoning as "rules that define where you can build, what you can build, and what auxiliary details you must include". They just don't call it zoning.More importantly, near everyone arguing for change in zoning aren't saying that zoning should be abolished, just changed. So, Houston is not a counter-example.

You don't need to do anything of the sort. Housing is one of the most tightly regulated form of capital expenditure in the US.Most of the US is zoned to SFH-only zoning. What this means is that real-estate developers and property owners are not allowed by law to build anything other than a single-family home. This is accompanied by mandates to achieve certain minimum lot sizes (lots have to be at least a certain size), maximum FAR (Floor-Area Ratio), and minimum setbacks (a reside

not when there's no zoning?

I'm hardly an expert on this, but I've heard that many places in the US have quite restrictive zoning laws that don't allow mixing residential and commercial buildings, require massive parking lots, only single family homes, and lots of roads.

I assume OP is talking about US zoning laws which separate residential zones from commercial ones.