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 attention to the role […]
Cities for families?
In response to David Albouy & Jason Faberman’s new NBER paper, Skills, Migration and Urban Amenities over the Life Cycle, Lyman Stone asks if this means that cities will always have lower fertility? I think the answer is probably yes, but that’s extrapolating beyond the paper at hand. What this paper shows is that there […]
Deep Research: Supermajority laws around the states
Here are the results of my first use of OpenAI’s Deep Research tool. I asked for information that I know well – and in which inaccurate research has been published. It did a great job and relied substantially on my own research. But it also went beyond my list – identifying protest petition statutes in […]
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 still in vogue with lawmakers. Salim Furth […]
Morton’s Fork and urbanism
I recently read about an interesting logical fallacy: the Morton’s fork fallacy, in which a conclusion “is drawn in several different ways that contradict each other.” The original “Morton” was a medieval tax collector who, according to legend, believed that someone who spent lavishly you were rich and could afford higher taxes, but that someone […]
How much housing does Massachusetts build?
In a recent post, I revealed the 91 large cities and counties that consistently fail to report complete data to the federal Building Permit Survey (BPS). But what about smaller jurisdictions, which often have weak record-keeping and slim staffs – and what about states made up of many such small jurisdictions? The gold standard for […]
Review: Key to the City, by Sara Bronin
A review of a book that endorses more flexible zoning, but doesn’t reject zoning entirely.
Snowy Sidewalks
Snowfall reveals a curiosity of the commons and – Alan Cole claims – something about the character of urban progressives.
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 critic John Podhoretz tweeted: “Yeah, nothing easier that taking the subway from […]
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 lawsuit. Easy to file but difficult to resolve, lawsuits by […]
Does your city do its part to measure housing production?
We identified large 91 cities and counties that regularly fail to report their building permits to the Census Bureau – including some surprising culprits.
Homelessness exits: Systems or individual factors?
We can all understand the distinction between individual and systemic causes of homelessness. Can we apply the same rigor to potential solutions?
Housing filters (dorm / shelter edition)
An old dorm becomes a new shelter for homeless families in DC.