Zoning is justified in all sorts of ways today, but at its birth—arguably in New York City, in 1916—it was aimed squarely at halting what upper-class New Yorkers saw as the decay of the city as neighborhoods built for the rich filtered down to the city’s growing immigrant masses. A century later, the movement is in the other direction—the rich are outbidding middle-class and poor New Yorkers for space in a phenomenon known as gentrification. New Yorkers tend to view development as the cause, but a more careful reading of history shows that it’s zoning, and the housing shortage that it’s created, that are responsible for the reversal and for the growing waves of displacement washing over cities from New York to San Francisco.

Jane Jacobs famously argued that “a city cannot be a work of art.” Rather, a city is a place where people with diverse knowledge, skills, and tastes change space, make and break ties, and transform resources and ideas in innovative and controversial ways. It’s an unpredictable, messy—even dangerous—but deeply creative process.

Why are young people and immigrants struggling to afford to live in your city? It’s simple supply and demand, and decades of government policy at multiple levels is making matters worse.

To be announced.

Details to come.