It's hard to imagine a better example than this: A natural zoning experiment in Denver: These two homes straddle a 2010 zoning boundary change. The result: The house in duplex zoning converted into two homes, and the other converted into a McMansion that cost 80% more.Arthur Gailes, AEI This … [Read more...]
Milton’s Zoning Referendum
"Wow!" the reporter said, "I knew you from Milton, but I didn't know you were from East Milton. Tell me what it feels like?" Well, until last week it was not that dramatic. East Milton is an old railroad-commuter neighborhood favored by affluent Boston Irish. It's separated from the City of … [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...]
Local iniquity
There was an interesting article in the New York Times magazine this week on the rise of extended stay hotels, which specialize in renting to a group within the working poor- people who have the cash for weekly rent, but cannot easily rent traditional apartments due to their poor credit … [Read more...]
Why Houston Isn’t An Argument for Zoning
Someone just posted a video on Youtube using Houston, Texas as an argument in favor of zoning. The logic of the video is: Houston is horrible; Houston has no zoning; therefore every city should have conventional zoning. This video and its logic are impressively wrong, for several reasons. … [Read more...]
Are increased levels of homeownership good for affordability? No… and yes.
For over a century, policymakers have argued that homeowners take better care of their neighborhood and are just generally more desirable in other ways. As early as 1917, the federal Labor Department created a propaganda campaign to encourage home ownership. And in 1925, Commerce … [Read more...]
Review: The Urban Mystique, by Josh Stephens
This book, available from solimarbooks.com, is a set of very short essays (averaging about three to five pages) on topics related to urban planning. Like me, Stephens generally values walkable cities and favors more new housing in cities. So naturally I am predisposed to like this book. But there … [Read more...]
The Storper paper: not exactly a bombshell
Some commentators are slightly agog over an academic paper by Andres Rodrieguz-Pose and Michael Storper; Richard Florida writes that they shows that " the effect of [housing] supply has been blown far out of proportion. " Most of this paper isn't really about the effect of housing supply on … [Read more...]
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