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Stephen Smith

Stephen Smith

I graduated Spring 2010 from Georgetown undergrad, with an entirely unrelated and highly regrettable major that might have made a little more sense if I actually wanted to become an international trade lawyer, but which alas seems good for little else. I still do most of the tweeting for Market Urbanism Stephen had previously written on urbanism at Forbes.com. Articles Profile; Reason Magazine, and Next City
  • Joined: May 21, 2025
  • Articles: 282
  • Comments: 41

Virginia land use law: Marc Scribner from CEI responds

After I put up the post this weekend about a Virginia Tea Party group’s opposition to a state law forcing counties to upzone enough land for medium-density development, I sent an email to Marc Scribner at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian group, asking his opinion on the law. He was kind enough to give us his thoughts, and here they are: While I would like to see a lot more upzoning and would support state-wide legislation that would limit local exclusionary zoning (or ideally prohibit it!), subsection (1)(B) provision (6) seems problematic. Basically, legislatures should restrict exclusion, rather than force inclusion by establishing UDAs and specifying design and form aspects, if they are to pursue land-use liberalization at the state level. Also, the lack of a provision limiting property condemnations within UDAs could spur more eminent domain abuse, which has been a nasty side effect of poorly structured upzoning that results in things such as access to transit and new sanitation capacity being prioritized over property rights. David Alpert might not agree, but I consider the government robbing private property owners of their land to be a far greater offense than prohibiting multi-unit housing or mixed-use development, as much as I dislike these regulatory takings. (Although I believe Virginia has an interesting requirement that jurors in an eminent domain case be property owners.) The reason why one might see more ED abuse within upzoned areas is that going from less intense development to more intense generally calls for more public infrastructure investment (or worse, grandiose PPP projects). This is particularly true in more residential areas, as commercial and industrial zones typically have near-adequate or overbuilt sanitation facilities, etc., that can accommodate more growth. Not saying that dev is bad, but any time comprehensive redevelopment becomes more likely, people need […]

David Alpert calls out Virginia Tea Party group as land use statists

David Alpert at Greater Greater Washington has been on top of a story out of Virginia about a Virginia Tea Party group and its bizarre and seemingly anti-free market opposition to a state law forcing local governments to make room for dense growth. The law – which was passed a few years ago by Republicans, as David notes – included a few provisions, but the one in question, which a longtime Northern Virginia Republican is seeking to overturn, required each locality to designate an “urban development area” in which it would allow medium density development. It appears that the original plan was to have an urban growth boundary too, outside of which development would be much harder, but I’m not sure that was included in the version that passed. But whatever the rest of the law contained, Del. Robert G. Marshall and Virginia’s Campaign for Liberty are only opposing the provision that forces localities to provide upzoned land “sufficient to meet projected residential and commercial growth” for the next decade or two. I’ve read the bill (it’s relatively short), and the provision in question doesn’t even put a floor on density in the zoning area or cap the amount of parking allowed – all it does is force local governments to allow developers to build at higher densities. Here is, as far as I can tell, the strictest condition on the UDAs, which also have to allow mixed uses and smaller lot set-backs: The comprehensive plan of a locality having a population of 130,000 or more persons shall provide for urban development areas that are appropriate for development at a density on the developable acreage of at least eight single-family residences, 12 townhouses, or 24 apartments, condominium units, or cooperative units per acre, and an authorized floor area ratio of at least 0.8 […]

Links

1. A shameless story of rent control in NYC. Glad to see that the city is forcing developers to subsidize wealthy Manhattanites’ Eat, Pray, Love-like dreams of moving to Paris. 2. The travails of getting a bus lane on a busy LA street where “[m]ore people already travel by bus than by car along the route during peak hours.” 3. Here is what appears to be another example of bad zoning creating blight, and the city using said blight to seize the property via eminent domain and hand it over to favored developers. NYC zoning maps are shockingly difficult to read – can anybody tell me what is allowed to be built, as of right, in the area bounded by 125th and 127th Sts. and 2nd and 3rd Ave. in Manhattan? 4. NYC’s new zoning lite handbook. No code should be so complicated that a 168-page handbook can’t even contain a zoning map.

Links

1. Systemic Failure calls out the Bay Area for giving an award to a textbook example of greenwashing in urbanism: Ironically, this project was recently promoted on the SF-Streetsblog website by “New Urbanist” developer Peter Calthrope for its “highest level” of green technology. What does it say for the Bay Area environmental community, that such stupendously ugly, auto-oriented architecture can win “sustainable community of the year” awards? I love how vociferous and blunt Systemic Failure’s criticism is – it’s something that’s sorely missing in the overly self-congratulatory planning blogosphere. 2. LA rushes to get another giant hulking parking lot in before Jerry Brown turns off the “redevelopment” tap. 3. Interesting charts on the gas tax throughout history.

If highways push traffic onto local roads, why not toll them too?

Peter Gordon blogs about a paper he presented at the Transportation Research Board conference in DC: My friends and I just presented this paper at the Transportation Research Board meetings in Washington DC. We tested the effects of tolling Los Angeles’ freeways in the peak hours (we tested 10 cents and 30 cents per mile). It’s a simulation on a real network and many substitutions occur. As expected, peak-hour freeway speeds increase, some people switch to surface streets and that traffic slows, some switch to off-peak hours and some (very few) travel less. And politicians take in a lot of money! That’s for the 10-cent toll. The 30-cent toll overloads the surface streets. Many other options can be tested, including only tolling some of the freeways. Planners have voiced concern that tolling the freeways would overload surface streets. There is probably a “sweet spot” that can easily be found. We also plan to look for effects on freight travel as well as travel by income groups. He’s established that “very few” people lessen their travel. And if the the number of people who switch to off-peak hours is small compared to the number of people who move to surface streets (and judging from my very cursory perusal of the paper, it seems like this is the case), then tolling is just shifting the burden from highways to local roads. This could be a problem since local roads, unlike highways, are paid for almost entirely out of general revenue, not user fees. It seems like the rational thing to do at this point is to argue for tolling local surface streets as well, perhaps through a congestion charge. Maybe I missed it (like I said, I didn’t read the presentation paper thoroughly), but his talk of a “sweet spot” in the summary […]

The roots of anti-density sentiment

Matt Yglesias, Kevin Drum, and Ryan Avent have been discussing the political economy of anti-density regulations, and I have a lot of comments, but I’m not sure I have the time (or, really, the patience) to air all of them. So, we’ll see how long this post gets. First of all, I think all this talk of federal policy is misguided. Writing about the federal government sells well in journalism since it reaches the widest audience, but even taking into account the feds’ massive power grab over the last century, the real action is still at the local level. Local property tax distortions favoring single family homes are widespread and egregious, but orders of magnitude more ink gets spilled about the relatively ineffectual mortgage interest tax deduction. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s refusal to fund mixed use developments is unfortunate, but it’s nothing compared to the almighty parking minimum. So while obviously the rural-biased Senate isn’t doing urbanism any favors, the nation’s Greatest Deliberative Body is next to meaningless when compared to lowly municipal governments. Secondly, I think that historically speaking, Ryan Avent is starting his analysis a few decades too late. He cites the Great Migration(s) of blacks out of the South and the law-and-order backlash as a reason that American politicians fear density, but the real anti-density legislation began around the turn of the century, decades before the black boogeyman hit the scene. And while the federal highway projects that Ryan cites were bad for cities, they were really the final nail in the coffin – urban business associations welcomed them as a cure for decentralization. In other words, cities were already in decline by the time the interstate highways started papering over neighborhoods. The real germ entered the system decades earlier. In my opinion, at least, the […]

Who believes that smart growth caused the recession?

So, I have a question. This might sound like I’m trying to be snarky, but I’m actually genuinely in search of an answer: Is there any economist out there other than Wendell Cox and Joel Kotkin who actually believes this? This all should give some pause to the relentless hoopla about the country’s supposed “urban renaissance.” The roots of the current economic crisis lie deep in urban economies, where employment growth that has lagged even in good times.  During the last economic expansion, urban job growth was roughly one-sixth that of suburbs and one-third that of smaller communities. I believe the smart growth-caused-the-subprime-mortgage theory originated with Wendell Cox, and while Joel Kotkin’s statement is rather vague and leaves a lot of wiggle room, it sure sounds like he’s buying into it, too. Any others to add to the list?

More empirical evidence that parking minimums matter

The other day, I had a meeting with Sam Staley and we both lamented the paucity of good empirical evidence about how land use regulations actually affect the built environment. For the ubiquitous minimum parking requirements, the only thing I’ve seen up until now was this study about the effects for LA County’s population of 10 million. But searching on Google Scholar, I found a 2011 article called Minimum parking requirements and housing affordability in New York City in the journal Housing Policy Debate which also addresses the issue: […] In this article, we explore the theoretical objections to minimum parking requirements and the limited empirical literature. We then use lot-level data and GIS to analyze parking requirements in New York City to determine to what extent they are already effectively sensitive to transit proximity. Finally, we examine developer response to parking requirements by comparing the number of spaces that are actually built to the number required by applicable zoning law. Our results indicate that the per-unit parking requirement in New York is, on average, lower in areas near rail transit stations, but the required number of spaces per square foot of lot area is higher, on average, in transit accessible areas. We also find that by and large, developers tend to build only the bare minimum of parking required by zoning, suggesting that the minimum parking requirements are binding for developers, as argued by critics, and that developers do not simply build parking out of perceived marked [sic?] need. Our results raise the possibility that even in cities with complex and tailored parking requirements, there is room to tie the requirements more closely to contextual factors. Further, such changes are likely to result in fewer parking spaces from residential developers. Unfortunately I cannot find an ungated version of the full […]

Bloomberg pokes (again) at hornet’s nest of entitled drivers

The New York Daily News broke the story yesterday that New York lawmakers are once again trying to push congestion pricing through the state legislature, a task at which Mayor Michael Bloomberg failed in 2008 after meeting fierce resistance from outer borough and suburban drivers. Learning from his previous failed bid to charge drivers $8/day to enter Manhattan below 60th Street, the plan is being rebranded as “traffic pricing” and will be linked to payroll tax relief for those outside the five boroughs in an attempt to win the support of suburban legislators who torpedoed the 2008 proposal. Despite being the most transit-saturated city in America, New York City drivers have had free reign of its surface streets since the days when they were maintained by private streetcar companies. Unlike highway users and transit riders, drivers have never been asked to pay a penny in direct fees for the local roads they use. This has created generations of Americans who feel entitled to freeride on the backs of their poorer, car-less fellow citizens, which has made congestion pricing one of Bloomberg’s rare failures during his decade-long tenure as mayor. New York State Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Nassau County) calls it “just another tax,” but it differs from a general tax in one critical way: It is levied solely on those who drive in Manhattan, meaning that it does not redistribute wealth from those who don’t use the roads to those who do. And while the accounting costs for modes of transportation are subsidized to some extent, roads have enormous opportunity costs—far higher than transit, which uses relatively marginal underground land and has a minuscule footprint relative to paved roads. Land is extremely expensive in New York City, so these opportunity costs are larger than they might be out in […]

Links

1. Laneway housing, Vancouver vs. Toronto. 2. New York state lawmakers want to ban using a phone or listening to headphones while crossing streets. Unfortunately for us pedestrians, there are very few limited access, grade-separated walkways, so in essence this would criminalize listening to an iPod while walking. 3. An interesting article about transportation in Singapore, with an emphasis on congestion pricing and other ways of recouping the enormous opportunity costs of urban roads. 4. I’ve been aware of this for a while, but it still shocks me every time (emphasis mine): We know New Yorkers are being injured and killed just about every day. (Like the 35-year-old woman who was run over by a dump truck on the Upper East Side Monday while legally crossing the street. Did you hear about that one? The dump truck driver stayed at the scene and wasn’t drunk, so it was basically a freebie for him — a clean, legal kill as far as the NYPD is concerned. Can you imagine if she were your wife or sister or colleague? Anyway… back to those damned bikes, right?…) 5. Yet another example of why I don’t think the Texas Transportation Institute’s congestion metrics are useful. 6. As if we needed any more proof: Big cities are inherently green.

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