Tomorrow night Berkeley, CA, will vote on ending single family zoning. It's something local activist Dorothy Walker has been working on for half a century. My story: grist.org/cities/zoned-o…
Cities across the US are allowing more diverse housing by doing away with single family zones - see also Oakland, San Jose, which are exploring the idea
When @loridroste introduced it in Berkeley with @TaplinTerry and @RigelRobinson she hammered out this epic thread. I read it and thought - wait really?
It seemed so crazy that racist zoning could morph into wealth-based zoning that effectively maintained segregation, and that we'd all come to accept that as normal. Could this be right? I asked @Muhammad_Speaks and @SMenendian who said, basically - Yup.
You can see it in the map @compatibilism made using data from @oandbinstitute
Sometimes YIMBY and social justice groups have scrapped, but it's different when you are talking about allowing more people into wealthy white neighborhoods, @SMenendian explained: The entire force of the Fair Housing movement is behind that effort.
There's a good chance this particular effort could slow to a standstill or dilute down to meaninglessness. Lots of people in Berkeley are furious about this - they aren't racist - they just moved to their neighborhood because they like it and want to keep it from changing.
@SophieHahn has a memory that didn't make it into my piece: Sitting at a window-seat with a view across the city as a girl and hearing her elderly neighbor say, "I watched every house you can see get built from here."
So much changed so quickly, then, around 1960 - stopped.
"The idea that exactly how it is, is right, and how it should be," Hahn said, is arbitrary. She has a million details she wants to get right, but when I asked if she saw any reason to slow this down she said, "No," other than public safety - wildfire risk.
The story is in @grist because it's clear that the status quo is a climate and justice disaster. We can't get ghg neutral without denser cities. Full stop. @NancySkinnerCA bumped into this reality earlier than most:
This is the Ur-story of our epoch imho: Can environmentalism morph from a movement to STOP things (bulldozers, chainsaws), and become a movement to CHANGE EVERYTHING in time to save civilization? That's what this is about.
final things - @benbartlettberk is an author of this Berkeley effort as well! He's cited in the piece, but I forgot to include him here.
And if you want to learn more about Walker: digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/roho/ucb/text/…
Oops one more fix - apparently twitter suggested the wrong Hahn - it's @SophieHahnBerk

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More from @SavorTooth

24 Mar
So much good stuff happening at @grist - the website. Remodeled down to the studs. grist.org And wait, there's more
A great Grist 50 is out: grist.org/grist-50/2021/
A hopeful piece from @shannonosaka on sneaky climate policy. "It’s not particularly sexy, or particularly interesting. And that’s the whole point. 'Lack of public attention is a feature, not a bug,' @atrembath explained." Historically, it's how bills pass
grist.org/politics/why-b…
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22 Jul 20
My buddies @mehannibal and @the_wrangler on opposite sides of the John Muir debate latimes.com/local/californ… My two cents:
Instead of canceling the guy, I wish we would take this opportunity to understand the man in full -- not just as a prophet or a wilderness mystic, but as an affluent farmer who went to war with nature on his ranch, but deemed it sacred when hiking in the mountains.
He was perfectly happy to extract resources from the natural world to support himself, but condemned Native Americans for doing the same in the places he wanted to hike, and helped kick them off their land.
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