The problem (edit: "a problem") is that this down zoning is basically state and federally enforced.

Temecula would happily grow but they can't just repeal their laws and say "go for it" because in order to get their citizens tax money back in the form of grant money (with strings of course, because that's how grants work) they have to have these laws because these "we will mandate parking, and then we will create beurocratic hell for anyone who wants to pave anything" in order to check some sort of "municipalities shall implement..." type law.

And it's not just the clean this or that act, it's every goddamn issue and area of regulation.

So basically SF not only gets to eat its cake, but it gets to prevent every other city in the state from doing something drastically different from what they're doing.

And you can run this example in any state, just change the cities. And it happens federally too.

> Temecula would happily grow but they can't just repeal their laws and say "go for it" because in order to get their citizens tax money back in the form of grant money (with strings of course, because that's how grants work) they have to have these laws because these "we will mandate parking, and then we will create beurocratic hell for anyone who wants to pave anything" in order to check some sort of "municipalities shall implement..." type law.

> And it's not just the clean this or that act, it's every goddamn issue and area of regulation.

> So basically SF not only gets to eat its cake, but it gets to prevent every other city in the state from doing something drastically different from what they're doing.

> And you can run this example in any state, just change the cities. And it happens federally too.

I don't think you can run this example in any state.

Maybe Mansfield, TX; or Waxahachie, TX (both south of the DFW metroplex) would love to grow. And there's not much stopping them regulatory-wise there. Yeah, car infrastructure and parking is necessary, but that's literally true everywhere within a few hundreds of miles, and isn't really restricted at the state level or by geography anywhere in the area, including the places like Frisco or The Colony on the north side of the Metroplex that have grown like crazy in the last 30 years.

But the Metroplex "proper" - which now includes the popular new surrounding cities - has gotten a lot more expensive over the same time frame.

There's a demand aspect that means some places can build into the growth, and others can't. What's the old saw? Location, location, location. There's all the land in the world to grow outwardly in the area, but it doesn't happen uniformly in every direction, and it hasn't prevented rising costs in the popular areas. It's less acute than SF because the raging single-family-zoning NIMBYism isn't accompanied by being landlocked, but the combo of NIMBYism + popularity/demand constraining where new construction happens mean that supply hasn't kept up with demand. And the money you'd save by living somewhere else, for many, doesn't justify giving up the location they want, so those other areas don't have a strong economic case for growth (why invest in a project there instead of a project on the north side?).

(THAT part is universal, and part of why I wonder just how much Temecula would actually want to grow: would growth just look like Riverside or San Bernadino? Folks with means aren't choosing the inland locations first... and unlike in TX, the weather is enormously different.)