I temporarily moved to Santiago in late 1991. For the first few months, I had a room in a house owned by an elderly couple way out in upscale suburb called Las Condes, beyond the end of the metro. (There were only two metro lines.) Back then, it was a neighborhood of single and double-family homes. Apoquindo Avenue was essentially a suburban strip, densely built-up by American standards, with the occasional high-rise and pedestrian-friendly sidewalks, but a suburban strip nonetheless.
I wouldn't've recognized the neighborhood (since I couldn't remember the name of the damned cross-street to save my life) if it hadn't been for the minor miracle that the Pizza Hut on the corner of Apoquindo and Capitanía was still there. But I remembered the house was on Nevería, a block from the street that hit Apoquindo at the Pizza Hut, and with the cross-street I could locate it. So I went looking. And what did I find? Big apartment buildings!
Could that kind of change happen in America? I have my doubts. In my last post, I briefly discussed the high cost of American zoning laws. Such laws prevent wholescale changes in land use, causing cities to sprawl more than they would have otherwise. In other words, they lock in the existing pattern of land use, preventing the kind of wholescale change that in past decades gave us such delights as the boulevards of Queens and Wilshire, where high-rise corridors sprouted along formerly suburban strips. Today, I don't know if that happens at all, with the exception of a few downtown districts. When densification pressure starts in an American neighborhood characterized by single-family homes, zoning changes usually squash it, the way New York City has moved to protect the pristine environment of Queens from an onslaught of apartments. Let alone, say, the Bay Area. Imagine Palo Alto filled with high-rises and three times the population.
And no, Houston is not an exception.
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