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Liberalizing Cities
From The Ground Up
Every so often I read a tweet or listserv post saying something like this: “If modern buildings were prettier there’d be less NIMBYism.” I always thought this claim was silly for the simple reason that in real-life rezoning disputes, people…
In Greater Greater Washington, my dad and I have a new editorial explaining how a ring-and-access traffic circulation plan inspired by the Netherlands can keep necessary traffic moving while delivering neighborhood streets and iconic shopping streets from traffic. Read the…
I walked down the 400 block of K St with an international guest last night. It was hard to describe the transformation of the street. Google Streetview, however, has been there almost since the beginning. 2007 2011 2014 2017 2018…
Colleges are the perfect place for walkable neighborhoods, yet many colleges don’t focus on Transit Oriented Development. The Purple line going through the University of Maryland is a key expansion point for the D.C metro and will allow greater connections…
I recently saw a tweet complaining that left-wing YIMBYs favored urban containment- a strategy of limiting suburban sprawl by prohibiting new housing at the outer edge of a metropolitan area. (Portland’s urban growth boundaries, I think, are the most widely…
walkable suburbs have as many children as more typical suburbs
Snowfall reveals a curiosity of the commons and - Alan Cole claims - something about the character of urban progressives.
Because there are no market signals that could identify the best and highest use of street space, it is the role of urban planners to allocate the use of street space between different users and to design boundaries between them where needed.
Cities have always invited us to be constantly on the move. We move around to get to work, go shopping, meet friends, attend a concert, visit an art exhibition, and take advantage of all the many activities that a metropolis offers.
Updated 1/11/24 to add 3 new papers, Wegmann, Baqai, and Conrad (2023), Dobbels & Tavakalov (2023), and Hamilton (2024). The original post was published 3/14/23. A concerted research effort has brought minimum lot sizes into focus as a key element in city zoning reform. Boise is looking at significant reforms. Auburn, Maine, and Helena, Montana, did away with minimums in some zones. And even state legislatures are putting a toe in the water: Bills enabling smaller lots have been introduced [in 2023] in Arizona, Massachusetts, Montana, New York, Texas, Vermont, and Washington. The bipartisan appeal of minimum lot size reform is reflected in Washington HB 1245, a lot-split bill carried by Rep. Andy Barkis (R-Chehalis). It passed the Democratic-dominated House of Representatives by a vote of 94-2 and has moved on to the Senate. City officials and legislators are, reasonably, going to have questions about the likely effects of minimum lot size reductions. Fortunately, one major American city has offered a laboratory for the political, economic, and planning questions that have to be answered to unlock the promise of minimum lot size reforms. Problem, we have a Houston Houston’s reduced minimum lot sizes from 5,000 to 1,400 square feet in 1998 (for the city’s central area) and 2013 (for outer areas). This reform is one of the most notable of our times – and thus has been studied in depth. For a summary treatment, see Emily Hamilton’s 2023 case study. To bring all the existing scholarship into one place, I’ve compiled this annotated bibliography covering the academic papers and some less-formal but informative articles that have studied Houston’s lot size reform. Please inform me of anything I’m missing – I’ll add it. Political economy of Houston’s reform M. Nolan Gray & Adam Millsap (2020). Subdividing the Unzoned City: An Analysis […]
