Nobody is talking about building a single multidwelling building. But you can't make rules just for a single building (what are you going to do for the next building... And the next). There are plenty of examples where local governments have removed lots of restrictions and essentially created Airbnb wastelands, a good example is the southbank in Melbourne. The last time I looked into it (admittedly some years ago), they had a single primary school and one post office for ~50000 people IIRC. It was definitely high density housing, but no infrastructure that makes it liveable except for running Airbnb and rich people who want a holiday apartment close to the casino.
> Nobody is talking about building a single multidwelling building.
Then why is that the level at which the decision is made?
> But you can't make rules just for a single building (what are you going to do for the next building... And the next).
The point is that you can respond to demand rather than legislating it. If four high rises are going up in a neighborhood, the city officials can notice this and use the new tax revenue to build infrastructure those new buildings need, and then go on the MLS and find a local property for sale in the area which is in a good location to turn into a park etc. None of this requires restricting the construction.
> There are plenty of examples where local governments have removed lots of restrictions and essentially created Airbnb wastelands
This is really the opposite problem. If you have restrictions that heavily constrain where you can put short-term rentals, and then you set aside an area where they're permitted, of course that area is going to be saturated with them -- you're still prohibiting them from being anywhere else, so they all end up there.
This is the fatal flaw in the zoning board. "You can build anything here" should be the default, and then if you want to set aside 20% of the land in the area to be exclusive for e.g. single-family homes for the people who want that, that's fine. But we do the opposite -- 80+% of the land is required to be single-family homes and not even the entire remainder is allowed to be multi-unit buildings.
Monocultures are shitholes. Nobody wants to live in a place which is exclusively short-term rentals, or exclusively office towers. It even sucks to live in a place which is exclusively single-family homes, because then you're isolated from the community and have to spend half your day sitting in traffic to get anywhere.
What you need is the majority of the land area to be mixed-use zoning. Which is the opposite of having an area set aside which is predominantly short-term rentals.
