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Other than Seattle, I am not surprised at any of the others. The further west you go, in my many various travels and stays, the more integrated the MSAs become.
The site does not explain how it boiled down monster metro areas spread over as many as 4 states with multiple counties, towns, villages to one number. It is beyond ridiculous.
Here is the reference to the methodology:
"See the paper and its online supplementary materials for more of the technical details."
Nothing else. No link.
I guess we will just have to take their word that NY Metro is 2.01.
Other than Seattle, I am not surprised at any of the others. The further west you go, in my many various travels and stays, the more integrated the MSAs become.
I don't think it's really that correlated with integration. In national rankings of racial integration, the Seattle MSA usually ranks near the middle --- definitely not top 10 most segregated.
Judging by Houston being the example they show of a lower "exclusionary zoning" area, I'm assuming it means generally "more impediments to construction" of any kind. Houston is famous for its "5-story apartment building next to a mall next to a Burger King next to a cemetery" landscapes that come from the laissez-faire zoning.
It's hard to say what unifies these top 10 metros (besides being in the eastern US). I guess they're mostly older cities, so more time to accumulate regulations, which tend not to disappear? There are also a number of progressive cities, which I can see having more land use mandates based on environmental regulations. Alternately, maybe just having a stronger white-collar job market is related to more strictly industrial and residential zoning?
New Bedford and Fall River were built with housing mill workers in mind, so I don't see how cities full of existing tenements and low income people can suffer from "exclusionary zoning".
The idea of forcing housing giant multiple modern apartment projects into desirable neighborhoods by tearing down nice single family homes is an abomination IMO.
Adaptive re-use of old industrial buildings in older cities is the best way to go. Everything is preserved and it is more ecological. Here's an example from Hartford, CT.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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King County (Seattle/Bellevue) government is attempting to change this by their growth management act, and upzoning, and the City of Seattle even more so. The problem is the cost of what little available land remains. Developers are not going to demolish a house worth $1.6 million even if it's 50-60 years old to build an apartment building on a 5,000 sf lot. In Redmond, they have solved that problem by demolishing older commercial buildings downtown, and building high-rise apartments with retail below. With so many new ones now and tech layoffs one wonders if there will be anyone to rent them. Many of the retail spaces are still vacant well after completion.
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