Land-use scholars have offered a variety of policy proposals that attempt to identify institutional reforms to reduce the incentive for homeowner NIMBYs to protest development. For example, in a 2013 paper law professor David Schleicher proposed a policy called Tax Increment Local Transfers (TILTs). When a municipality permits a new development, the new construction will increase […]
How Suburban Parking Requirements Hold Back Downtown
You wake up thirty minutes before your alarm, jerking up after having a nightmare about a car crash. Reluctantly, you clean up, eat breakfast, and hop into your car. … [Read More...]
Congressional Housing Subsidies Won’t Lower DC Housing Prices, But Liberalizing Zoning Will
During his last days in office, former Representative Jason Chaffetz must have forgotten he is supposed to be a fiscal conservative. His recent comments that members of Congress need $2,500 stipends to afford housing in DC reflect a complete ignorance of both … [Read More...]
(Not So) Infinite Demand
In a recent blog post, Julia Galef has generated a fairly comprehensive list of pro-housing arguments and counterarguments to those arguments.She gives the most detailed consideration to the "infinite demand" argument- in her words,“So even if SF adds … [Read More...]
More on “Empty Houses”
I recently saw a Facebook post asserting that San Francisco has 30,000 vacant units, so therefore no market-rate housing should be built. So I looked up Census data on these allegedly empty units.It is true, according to the Census Factfinder website, … [Read More...]
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
Richard Rothstein’s “The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America” should be required reading for YIMBYs and urbanists of any ideological stripe. Rothstein argues that housing segregation in the US has been the intentional … [Read More...]
People Over Process: Why Democracy Doesn’t Justify Exclusion
Some people accept the idea that restrictive land use policy is just as bad as all the research suggests, but persist in supporting the status quo. They argue that if a community chooses to regulate its built environment, that choice should be respected as … [Read More...]
Is inclusionary zoning legal?
Market Urbanism may soon have a hearing in the Supreme Court. Two of my colleagues at the Mercatus Center, Sandy Ikeda, half a dozen other professors, and I argue that the Court should take up the case 616 Croft Ave., LLC, v. City of West Hollywood. The case … [Read More...]
COSMOS + TAXIS Issue on Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs’ writings span several disciplines—including ethics and most especially economics—but she is best known for her contributions to and her critique of urban planning, design, and policy. Many of those whom she influenced in academia, policy, and … [Read More...]
Empty Houses, part 2
The most interesting comment to my last post focused on one narrow issue: to what extent are vacant housing units second homes (and thus presumably less likely to be rented out) as opposed to units for rent/sale or held for other unknown reasons?Why does … [Read More...]