Kevin Erdmann offers a helpful corrective to the "YIMBY triumphalism" of claiming that large relative rent declines in Austin and Minneapolis are results of YIMBY policies. He's mostly correct, especially about the rhetoric: arguing about housing supply from short term fluctuations is like arguing … [Read more...]
Hopefully, AI will create a perpetual housing crisis
I don't know how successful artificial intelligence will be. But let's agree, for the moment, to consider a reasonably optimistic case where AI delivers significant productivity gains across a broad range of tasks - but not in a way that radically alters our Newtonian constraints. What would happen … [Read more...]
YIMBYs and liberals
The pro-housing movement (more colloquially known as "YIMBYs" as an acronym for "Yes In My Back Yard" can't catch a break from either the Left or the Right. On the Left, pundits like to "expose" them as supporters of big business. But conservatives don't always embrace YIMBYs either; both on … [Read more...]
Book Review: Arbitrary Lines – How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It
Arbitrary Lines is the newest must read book on zoning by land use scholar and Market Urbanism contributor, Nolan Gray. The book is split into three sections, starting with what zoning is and where it comes from followed by chapters on its varied negative effects, and ending with recommendations for … [Read more...]
Getting to “Yes”
In laudable news, the Pew Charitable Trusts have backed a research project at NYU’s Furman Center to commission and publish work “to understand how specific land use reforms…have affected outcomes on the ground, especially with respect to residential development.” While looking forward to that … [Read more...]
Why rents aren’t keeping up with house prices
Global house prices have been out of control for quite some time. This has helped to reduce economic growth, increase unemployment and was even diagnosed as the greatest cause of inequality in the developed world in a 2016 paper by Matthew Rognlie. However, rents have failed to show the same … [Read more...]