Montana passed a transformative land use reform package in 2023 - the “Montana Miracle”. This year, Montana’s legislature is again considering a lot of housing bills. The western United States overall has been the most dynamic region for pro-housing legislation, which makes sense since California is … [Read more...]
Resources for Reformers: Single-Stair Midrise Buildings
As a sense of urgency builds around North America’s housing affordability crisis, researchers have begun to look beyond zoning and permitting for ways to build more housing for less money. In the wake of a movement to bring more mass timber buildings to the US and Canada, some have turned their … [Read more...]
Yes in God’s backyard… and yes up to three stories?
With state legislative seasons in full swing, a picture of the landscape of land use reform is emerging. One dynamic I’ve been tracking: Yes In God’s Back Yard (YIGBY) bills, designed to allow religious organizations (and sometimes other nonprofits) to easily use their land to build housing, are … [Read more...]
Review: Key to the City, by Sara Bronin
In Key to the City, Sara Bronin both critiques and defends zoning. Like numerous other commentators (including myself) Bronin points out that anti-density regulations such as minimum lot size and minimum parking requirements artificially increase housing costs. Her critique of the latter … [Read more...]
Let’s Talk About Soundview
In New York City, one common argument against congestion pricing (or in fact, against any policy designed to further the interests of anyone outside an automobile) is that because outer borough residents are all car-dependent suburbanites, only Manhattanites would benefit. For example, film … [Read more...]
Neutralizing the Objector Lawsuit
Builders seeking approval for proposed real estate developments must in almost all American localities navigate a complex series of required procedural steps, but for those who persevere and succeed in obtaining a permit, one eleventh-hour device can bring all those efforts to naught: the objector … [Read more...]
Transit oriented development in Bengaluru could lead to additional $64 Million per year
A new paper in the Journal of Development Economics by Liming Chen, Rana Hasan, Yi Jiang, and Andrii Parkhomenko estimates the welfare gains of Transit Oriented Development in Bengaluru. The Bengaluru metro or the Namma metro is around 170Km long including the planned sections. Bengaluru has … [Read more...]
Where sale prices are going up
The conventional wisdom (based on Census estimates) seems to me that urban cores have lost population since COVID began, but are beginning to recover. But mid-decade Census estimates are often quite flawed. These estimates are basically just guesses based on complicated mathetmatical formulas, and … [Read more...]
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