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Charlie Gardner @charlescgardner.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

To paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke, "Any sufficiently advanced zoning is indistinguishable from Tokyo."

Charlie Gardner @charlescgardner.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

Interesting thoughts from @kevinerdmann.bsky.social in this post, but I want to highlight one point that someone raised at a recent forum: if Kevin is right that the US is short 15-20 million homes, what does that mean for *property tax revenue*? kevinerdmann.substack.com/p/quick-note...

kevinerdmann.substack.com

Quick note on housing and family formation

Scott Winship at the American Enterprise Institute recently posted on substack, “Has Marriage Fallen Because Young Adults Can’t Afford Homes?...Or Are Homes Unaffordable to Young Adults Because They M...

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Charlie Gardner @charlescgardner.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

Appreciative of Jason Sorens' review of the paper that @ebwhamilton.bsky.social and I authored on addressing regulatory takings through legislation as an alternative to litigation. Getting these laws "just right" is a challenge, and Jason has some further suggestions for improvement.

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Charlie Gardner @charlescgardner.bsky.social · 05/07/2025

Arizona's Prop 207 is probably the most enduring and effective of all the post-Kelo state laws and amendments. Although 207 was concerned with property rights rather than housing supply, in the article @ebwhamilton.bsky.social and I explain how it has provided a bulwark against downzonings.

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Charlie Gardner @charlescgardner.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

Virginia lawyers, is this typical of litigation practice in VA -- to default and enter judgment against a defendant for a single untimely filing? This is essentially unheard of in CT and NY practice.

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Charlie Gardner @charlescgardner.bsky.social · 01/06/2025

Amazing to see this, and crucially it also addresses lot width (frontages). The lot size provision says no mandates of greater than 3k square feet, but if the width and depth provisions are to be read conjunctively, the largest dimensions a locality could mandate would be 30'x 75', or 2,250 sq. ft.

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Charlie Gardner @charlescgardner.bsky.social · 31/05/2025

Connecticut's wide-ranging housing bill, HB 5002, cleared the state senate 20-15 in the early morning hours after numerous amendments that would have weakened it were rejected. Four Democrats joined all 11 Republicans in opposition.

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Reposted by Charlie Gardner

Welcoming Neighbors Network @welcomingneighbors.us · 31/05/2025

Connecticut just adopted a MASSIVE pro-housing law that: - Ends costly parking mandates (1st state east of the Rockies to do so) - Incentives transit oriented development & fair share - Allows middle housing in commercial zones - Allows manufactured homes everywhere Go @desegregatect.bsky.social!

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Charlie Gardner @charlescgardner.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

To the extent that "sprawl" is a pejorative directed at relatively dense gridded single-family development in Sunbelt cities (what always seems to be shown in accompanying photos), then yes, more, but hopefully better also. Which is what the New Urbanism has been trying to do for 30 plus years.

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Charlie Gardner @charlescgardner.bsky.social · 08/03/2025

The NIMBY grindstone in action: Greenwich, CT's zoning commission takes *three years* during an acute housing shortage to reduce a project on an existing 155-acre office park from 456 units to 309 units to 248 units and finally 198 units.

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Charlie Gardner @charlescgardner.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

Really an amazing achievement, and with very little last-minute watering-down of the original proposal as often seems to happen to ambitious rezonings. Three elements are absolutely key: no minimum lot sizes, no maximum number of units, and no parking requirements.

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Charlie Gardner @charlescgardner.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

Very sad news. Shoup's work is so influential his name has even become a byword. A city can embrace "Shoupism," adopt "Shoupian" policies, and hire "Shoupistas" to implement them. Reading him circa 2010 was important for me not just for parking policy but for how to think about cities in general.

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Charlie Gardner @charlescgardner.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

Evolution of Stamford, CT's lower Summer Street: 2012, 2017, 2021 and 2024.

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Charlie Gardner @charlescgardner.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

The absolute state of environmental protection in Connecticut: the owner of a building occupied by a Home Depot plans to use the state wetlands law to sue over the approval of a grocery store and urgent care across the street on a site that's already fully built up.

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Charlie Gardner @charlescgardner.bsky.social · 04/01/2025

Adding another submission for consideration in the "upzoning single-family areas can break judges' brains" category: the City of Raleigh is appealing a lower court decision denying its motion to dismiss a challenge to its missing middle zoning ordinance: www.carolinajournal.com/raleigh-asks...

carolinajournal.com

Raleigh asks NC Appeals Court to consider ‘missing middle’ dispute

Raleigh is asking North Carolina’s second-highest court to take up a case involving a legal challenge to the city’s “missing middle” development policies. Plaintiffs challenge the city’s removal of de...

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Charlie Gardner @charlescgardner.bsky.social · 01/01/2025

Why are anti-downzoning laws like North Carolina's recently-amended statute or Arizona's Proposition 207 important? Because situations like the below, where multifamily zoning crumbles into dust the moment a builder proposes to use it, aren't just theoretical possibilities. They actually happen.

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Charlie Gardner @charlescgardner.bsky.social · 29/12/2024

New Year's wish: an American city and/or homebuilder that can routinely plan for and design single-family neighborhoods that look like they're built for human beings rather than motor vehicles.

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Charlie Gardner @charlescgardner.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

With this provision of SB382, North Carolina closes a legislature-sized loophole in its anti-downzoning ordinance with a single stroke of the pen, handing property owners an override-proof veto against local actions that diminish property rights. H/t to Mark Zimmerman on X.

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Charlie Gardner @charlescgardner.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

This is the way. The closer the ADU concept approaches a straightforward right to build a second single-family dwelling on one lot the better. It's simpler for owner-builders, more familiar for lenders and more flexible for housing tenure. Even the acronym can remain: "Additional Dwelling Unit."

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Charlie Gardner @charlescgardner.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

All true, but was this the process envisioned by zoning's originators? Apparently yes. Bassett, Bettman et al. stated that "there should be, as a matter of policy, many such hearings," and that "it is right that every citizen should be able ... to protest against any [zoning] ordinance . . . ."

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Charlie Gardner @charlescgardner.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

1/10 Thread: the past 12 months have seen ups and downs for YIMBYs in court, but a Wisconsin Court of Appeals has now delivered a big win for the state's 2023 standing reform bill (AB266), ordering the early dismissal of a lawsuit against an infill project in the Village of Osceola.

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Charlie Gardner @charlescgardner.bsky.social · 24/11/2024

For starters here, an evergreen excerpt from Babcock's "The Zoning Game," which tells you the essence of what you need to know about American zoning -- what it was originally, what it still was when Babcock was writing in the 1960s, and what it remains today.

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