Market Urbanism

Liberalizing cities | From the bottom up

“Market Urbanism” refers to the synthesis of classical liberal economics and ethics (market), with an appreciation of the urban way of life and its benefits to society (urbanism). We advocate for the emergence of bottom up solutions to urban issues, as opposed to ones imposed from the top down.

Exempting Suburbia: How suburban sprawl gets special treatment in our tax code

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This is the third post in a series about government policies that encouraged suburban growth in the US. You can find the first part here and the second one here. Suburban sprawl gets preferential tax treatment in the US. As a result, it is cheaper to spend a dollar on housing than on … [Read more...]

How Governments Outlaw Affordable Housing

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This post was originally published at mises.org and reposted under a creative commons license. It's no secret that in coastal cities — plus some interior cities like Denver — rents and home prices are up significantly since 2009. In many areas, prices are above what they were at the peak of the … [Read more...]

Where The Permits Are

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Thanks to Stephen Smith, I recently ran across an interesting database: HUD data on building permits by municipality.   So I decided to find the number of permits per 1,000 for a wide variety of cities, focusing on (1) multifamily permits (because rising rent is a bigger problem in most places than … [Read more...]

The “Global Buyers” Argument

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One common argument against building new market-rate housing is that there is an infinite supply of rich foreigners willing to soak up new supply.  One obvious flaw in this argument is that housing prices do occasionally go down even in expensive places. But even leaving aside this reality, the … [Read more...]

Episode 02: Emily Hamilton on Land-Use Regulation and the Cost of Housing

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When I was scheduling out the first few episodes of the Market Urbanism Podcast, it seemed natural to start with one of Market Urbanism's favorite topics: the relationship between land-use regulation and rising housing costs in American cities. This week I sit down with Emily Hamilton, a regular … [Read more...]

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