I’ve always loved Strong Towns and especially how practical, data-driven, and results-oriented it is. Which is why I find Chuck’s arguments on state preemption so personally perplexing - to me it comes across as philosophical and that’s never what Strong Towns was about to me. Its lack of detail makes it hard to debate (not sure how to respond to the concern that because the feds messed up credit scores, we shouldn’t do state land use reform?). I will admit it makes me more upset than it probably should lol. But that’s only because the original Strong Towns message was so brilliant in its practicality, and shaped so many people’s approach to planning, including mine.
I think, as this post from Andrew Burleson shows, even if there are top-down "preemptive" ideas and initiatives for building more affordable housing coming from the state, there are still a myriad of ways the actual execution can get lost (or never start) in a swamp of requirements. Thus, for me, it's about both.
I wish someone smarter than me could look at why in a state like Oregon, where single-family zoning is basically illegal state-wide (something I feel like I see as a "step one" in so many articles offering legislative suggestions for making the housing environment more friendly), it's still lagging behind its stated housing production goals - fewer housing permits are being pulled, from 2022 to now.
When we talk about state preemption, we're often talking about direct intervention to put in new rules that replace all of that mess. Granted, this often ends up being like pruning a hedgerow, rather than wholesale copy/pasting over a city's entire zoning, building code, and approval process. (e.g. easing up requirements within a certain radius of transit stops and making permitting by-right).
That said, passing a state law is never enough. Cities find all manner of creative ways to delay or maliciously comply with state mandates in order to prevent construction. Dealing that is what we call "implementation" and often involve local YIMBYs doing city level advocacy to pressure electeds (or, in many cases just give them air cover) comply with state mandates in good faith. It also often involves suing (or threatening to sue) non-compliant cities (oftentimes, localities aren't actually that clever and just break the law).
In Portland, arguably Oregon's biggest city for development, inclusionary zoning requirements basically killed the housing permitting pipeline, like what happened in San Francisco, Denver, and Portland, Maine.
Upzoning alone just permits new housing types - if that's accompanied by poison pill policies around unsubsidized affordability requirements or other constraints, it still may not be an effective policy change.
SF saw this with their ADU laws which "ended single family zoning", but they preempted state laws to accelerate approval, required owners to own for 5 years prior to building, and required new units to come under rent control. Unsurprisingly, this new "upzoning" didn't yield many actual units of new housing. It was designed to pay lip service to constituents without actually affecting meaningful change.
"Marohn seems to argue that we should wait for public opinion to catch up before we change state laws, but we think that changing state laws is a great way to drive changes in public opinion."
That's nutty. I've never argued anything like that. It's not even a strawman.
Hey Chuck, that was in response to these specific lines from your response piece:
"Also, state preemption is not a silver bullet or a shortcut that gets around local resistance. We may win some policy victories through state mandates, but if we fail to reform the culture and capacity of cities themselves, those wins won’t endure."
This was one of a few parts where it wasn't totally clear to us what you meant by certain terms (eg 'reforming culture'), hence our specific phrasing "...seems to argue..."
I want to reaffirm it's not our intention to misrepresent your viewpoint; this was meant as our reaction to our best guess wrt what you were trying to say - apologies that this wasn't fully clear. I think there may just be some differences in vocabulary / conceptual scaffolding that will be easier to talk through in a live format, so I'm excited for you and Laura do something in real time.
I think you are demonstrating, to a degree, the kind of policy blindness that I find difficult to converse with, specifically in the YIMBY universe. It starts with state preemption as the solution and then all roads lead to Rome. Sometimes that results in people calling me a NIMBY-enabler. Sometimes, when people are more generous and thoughtful (as you are), it results in them interpreting what I'm saying as agreeing with preemption, but having preconditions.
I think I was pretty clear in that article, and I'll quote myself: "...if we do reluctantly reach for the preemption tool, we should use it like a scalpel, not a scythe, and acknowledge the many failures it represents."
It's not a matter of waiting for X to happen, then preemption is good. It is that we need an increase in local capacity to happen, and we should devote our energy to that outcome, but when we do -- reluctantly -- use preemption as a tool to help with that, it should be seen for the failure that it is.
Last thing: preemption is a means to an end. I'm often not sure what that end is when it comes to YIMBY discourse. It often feels like preemption is the end, or sticking it to NIMBYs is the end, or building more housing is the end. For Strong Towns, the end should be really, really clear when it comes to housing: we want neighborhoods to be able to adapt, evolve, and mature over time in response to stress and opportunity, which requires way more than simple changes to regulation.
You're right that we aren't reluctantly picking up state preemption as a scalpel. I think it's a great tool, not a dangerous one. But I also see it as a means to an end, and I want to build local support for it.
I'm not sure if you mean "local capacity" as the local governments capacity or the local political will - we focus on the local political will, and I think Strong Towns does too?
I think(?) we agree about neighborhoods needing to adapt, evolve, and mature over time in response to opportunity, which I would call demand. And I believe state preemption laws empower landowners with the freedom they need to respond to that opportunity/demand.
Personally, I don't see how cities and towns adopt the right policies fast enough without help from the state in the form of preemption bills. But I'm looking forward to talking more about this on your podcast!
Hi Joshua, I'm gonna ask you to refrain from personalized attacks here in the comments. Open season on ideas, but we're all here in good faith trying to understand each other and, more importantly, how to we can all push in the same direction toward a better world. Comments to the effect of "...you're an x, y, or zed..." are unhelpful.
"That’s why we’ve supported state-level reforms like eliminating parking minimums, legalizing backyard cottages, allowing duplexes in single-family zones, and requiring zoning codes to accommodate continual neighborhood maturing everywhere. These kinds of preemptions aren’t about centralizing power; they’re about lending assistance to cities that are struggling, not smashing the small reserves of agency that cities still have left."
As I understand it, you're framing a distinction between a "good" preemption that acts as "lending assistance" and a "bad" preemption that is "smashing the small reserves of agency."
When I apply this framework to eliminating parking minimums, I get stuck.
A state law banning parking minimums removes local control. From the city's perspective, their agency has been reduced.
Could you help me understand the principle you use to distinguish the two? What makes removing a city's power to mandate parking a form of "assistance," while other state actions that remove local power are considered "smashing agency"? I'm trying to understand how you draw the line.
There is no next evolution in the parking discussion. Parking is anti-place. Dealing with parking gets places unstuck.
For every neighborhood we get to add backyard cottages and duplexes, there are neighborhoods that need more than that. If not now, then in the future. So housing reforms need to build future capacity and support in a way that parking does not.
I’ve always loved Strong Towns and especially how practical, data-driven, and results-oriented it is. Which is why I find Chuck’s arguments on state preemption so personally perplexing - to me it comes across as philosophical and that’s never what Strong Towns was about to me. Its lack of detail makes it hard to debate (not sure how to respond to the concern that because the feds messed up credit scores, we shouldn’t do state land use reform?). I will admit it makes me more upset than it probably should lol. But that’s only because the original Strong Towns message was so brilliant in its practicality, and shaped so many people’s approach to planning, including mine.
I think, as this post from Andrew Burleson shows, even if there are top-down "preemptive" ideas and initiatives for building more affordable housing coming from the state, there are still a myriad of ways the actual execution can get lost (or never start) in a swamp of requirements. Thus, for me, it's about both.
I wish someone smarter than me could look at why in a state like Oregon, where single-family zoning is basically illegal state-wide (something I feel like I see as a "step one" in so many articles offering legislative suggestions for making the housing environment more friendly), it's still lagging behind its stated housing production goals - fewer housing permits are being pulled, from 2022 to now.
https://postsuburban.substack.com/p/how-cities-block-affordable-housing
https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2025/01/28/oregon-needs-to-build-29500-more-homes-each-year-chief-economist-says/
Hey Nick, thanks for commenting!
When we talk about state preemption, we're often talking about direct intervention to put in new rules that replace all of that mess. Granted, this often ends up being like pruning a hedgerow, rather than wholesale copy/pasting over a city's entire zoning, building code, and approval process. (e.g. easing up requirements within a certain radius of transit stops and making permitting by-right).
That said, passing a state law is never enough. Cities find all manner of creative ways to delay or maliciously comply with state mandates in order to prevent construction. Dealing that is what we call "implementation" and often involve local YIMBYs doing city level advocacy to pressure electeds (or, in many cases just give them air cover) comply with state mandates in good faith. It also often involves suing (or threatening to sue) non-compliant cities (oftentimes, localities aren't actually that clever and just break the law).
thanks for your response, Jeff!
Inclusionary zoning
In Portland, arguably Oregon's biggest city for development, inclusionary zoning requirements basically killed the housing permitting pipeline, like what happened in San Francisco, Denver, and Portland, Maine.
Upzoning alone just permits new housing types - if that's accompanied by poison pill policies around unsubsidized affordability requirements or other constraints, it still may not be an effective policy change.
SF saw this with their ADU laws which "ended single family zoning", but they preempted state laws to accelerate approval, required owners to own for 5 years prior to building, and required new units to come under rent control. Unsurprisingly, this new "upzoning" didn't yield many actual units of new housing. It was designed to pay lip service to constituents without actually affecting meaningful change.
Maybe it’s because regulations aren’t the problem?
say more!
"Marohn seems to argue that we should wait for public opinion to catch up before we change state laws, but we think that changing state laws is a great way to drive changes in public opinion."
That's nutty. I've never argued anything like that. It's not even a strawman.
Hey Chuck, that was in response to these specific lines from your response piece:
"Also, state preemption is not a silver bullet or a shortcut that gets around local resistance. We may win some policy victories through state mandates, but if we fail to reform the culture and capacity of cities themselves, those wins won’t endure."
This was one of a few parts where it wasn't totally clear to us what you meant by certain terms (eg 'reforming culture'), hence our specific phrasing "...seems to argue..."
I want to reaffirm it's not our intention to misrepresent your viewpoint; this was meant as our reaction to our best guess wrt what you were trying to say - apologies that this wasn't fully clear. I think there may just be some differences in vocabulary / conceptual scaffolding that will be easier to talk through in a live format, so I'm excited for you and Laura do something in real time.
I think you are demonstrating, to a degree, the kind of policy blindness that I find difficult to converse with, specifically in the YIMBY universe. It starts with state preemption as the solution and then all roads lead to Rome. Sometimes that results in people calling me a NIMBY-enabler. Sometimes, when people are more generous and thoughtful (as you are), it results in them interpreting what I'm saying as agreeing with preemption, but having preconditions.
I think I was pretty clear in that article, and I'll quote myself: "...if we do reluctantly reach for the preemption tool, we should use it like a scalpel, not a scythe, and acknowledge the many failures it represents."
It's not a matter of waiting for X to happen, then preemption is good. It is that we need an increase in local capacity to happen, and we should devote our energy to that outcome, but when we do -- reluctantly -- use preemption as a tool to help with that, it should be seen for the failure that it is.
Last thing: preemption is a means to an end. I'm often not sure what that end is when it comes to YIMBY discourse. It often feels like preemption is the end, or sticking it to NIMBYs is the end, or building more housing is the end. For Strong Towns, the end should be really, really clear when it comes to housing: we want neighborhoods to be able to adapt, evolve, and mature over time in response to stress and opportunity, which requires way more than simple changes to regulation.
You're right that we aren't reluctantly picking up state preemption as a scalpel. I think it's a great tool, not a dangerous one. But I also see it as a means to an end, and I want to build local support for it.
I'm not sure if you mean "local capacity" as the local governments capacity or the local political will - we focus on the local political will, and I think Strong Towns does too?
I think(?) we agree about neighborhoods needing to adapt, evolve, and mature over time in response to opportunity, which I would call demand. And I believe state preemption laws empower landowners with the freedom they need to respond to that opportunity/demand.
Personally, I don't see how cities and towns adopt the right policies fast enough without help from the state in the form of preemption bills. But I'm looking forward to talking more about this on your podcast!
You use vagaries to try to hide that fact that you're a boomer NIMBY. Nobody buys it old man.
Hi Joshua, I'm gonna ask you to refrain from personalized attacks here in the comments. Open season on ideas, but we're all here in good faith trying to understand each other and, more importantly, how to we can all push in the same direction toward a better world. Comments to the effect of "...you're an x, y, or zed..." are unhelpful.
I read Jeff and definitely read your piece his way.
I think getting really concrete with examples would be useful here.
Concrete examples? You mean like:
"That’s why we’ve supported state-level reforms like eliminating parking minimums, legalizing backyard cottages, allowing duplexes in single-family zones, and requiring zoning codes to accommodate continual neighborhood maturing everywhere. These kinds of preemptions aren’t about centralizing power; they’re about lending assistance to cities that are struggling, not smashing the small reserves of agency that cities still have left."
Thanks, Chuck, that's a helpful example!
As I understand it, you're framing a distinction between a "good" preemption that acts as "lending assistance" and a "bad" preemption that is "smashing the small reserves of agency."
When I apply this framework to eliminating parking minimums, I get stuck.
A state law banning parking minimums removes local control. From the city's perspective, their agency has been reduced.
Could you help me understand the principle you use to distinguish the two? What makes removing a city's power to mandate parking a form of "assistance," while other state actions that remove local power are considered "smashing agency"? I'm trying to understand how you draw the line.
There is no next evolution in the parking discussion. Parking is anti-place. Dealing with parking gets places unstuck.
For every neighborhood we get to add backyard cottages and duplexes, there are neighborhoods that need more than that. If not now, then in the future. So housing reforms need to build future capacity and support in a way that parking does not.