Jacobs' adopted city of Toronto; source: Unsplash.Continuing this series of book reviews on Jane Jacobs’ works, I now turn to Cities and the Wealth of Nations. But there is already a fantastic piece on the Market Urbanism website, by Matthew Robare, who reviews this book and outlines what Jacobs … [Read more...]
Living on the edge
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, … [Read more...]
Review: Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis
In Escaping the Housing Trap, Charles Marohn and Daniel Herriges address the role of zoning in creating the housing crisis. Like some other recent books (most notably by Nolan Gray and Bryan Caplan) this book shows how zoning limits housing supply and thus has led to our current housing crisis. … [Read more...]
Mumbai upzoning
Geetika Nagpal's job market paper, written with Sahil Gandhi, shows that a 2017 increase in allowed floor area ratio in Mumbai had a tremendous impact on affordability by accidentally improving the economics of smaller apartments.(Note that the authors are updating the paper, so some of the … [Read more...]
Is zoning unconstitutional?
Two law professors, Joshua Braver of Wisconsin and Ilya Somin of George Mason, are coming out with an article suggesting that exclusionary zoning (by which they mean, rules such as apartment bans and minimum lot sizes that are designed to exclude people less affluent than an area's current … [Read more...]
And the Oscar for best paper goes to…
A friend asked what are the best papers supporting land use liberalization. That's a broad question, but here are some of my answers.AffordabilityThe basic case for zoning reform, across the political spectrum, is that the rent is too damn high. Michael Manville, Michael Lens, and Paavo … [Read more...]
Court: Arlington “Missing Middle” Lawsuit May Proceed to Trial
By Andrew Crouch and Charles GardnerIn March 2023, Arlington County, Virginia passed an amendment to its zoning ordinance which legalized so-called “missing middle” housing typologies in several residential districts, including many which had been zoned for single-family homes. Ten local … [Read more...]
New Report: Georgia Not Quite an Unregulated Paradise
In a recent report from the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, Chris Denson and J. Thomas Perdue compile the strictest minimum lot size regulations and minimum home size regulations from a range of cities and counties in Georgia. 31 of Georgia’s 159 counties mandate minimum lot sizes (in … [Read more...]