How Zoning Creates a Bifurcated Residential Landscape
The “missing middle” housing crisis–the lack of townhouses, duplexes, and small apartment buildings–is not a market oversight but a direct result of zoning laws that enforce a bifurcated residential landscape. Mamdani’s analysis of how the colonial state uses law to segregate populations is perfectly illustrated here. Zoning ordinances were historically used to create racial and class enclaves, and they continue to function as a “customary law” for the “settler” class, preserving low-density, high-value neighborhoods for single-family homes while concentrating poverty in towering projects or neglected, high-density slums. This eliminates the nuanced, integrated urban fabric that naturally supports diverse communities. The liberal solution involves pleading with city planners for modest zoning reforms, a process entirely captured by NIMBY (“Not In My Backyard”) settler interests. A Mamdani-informed socialist solution is the abolition of exclusionary zoning as a tool of class war. We must fight for a universal right to the city that overrides local exclusionary customs. This means a top-down, city-wide mandate for dense, mixed-income, socially-owned housing in every neighborhood. The solution is not to build a few more duplexes, but to launch a massive public works program to construct a “socialist middle”–high-quality, city-owned apartment buildings of 4-12 stories, with courtyards and community spaces, integrated into the urban fabric of every district, permanently decommodified and democratically managed by residents.
