Elizabeth Warren’s housing bill has received a lot of love from those who favor of land use liberalization. Like Cory Booker’s housing bill, the Warren bill would seek to encourage state and local land use reform using federal grants as an incentive. Warren’s bill would significantly increase … [Read more...]
The Progressive Roots of Zoning
by Samuel R StaleyBefore the twentieth century land-use and housing disputes were largely dealt with through courts using the common-law principle of nuisance. In essence if your neighbor put a building, factory, or house on his property in a way that created a measurable and tangible harm, courts … [Read more...]
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
Richard Rothstein’s “The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America” should be required reading for YIMBYs and urbanists of any ideological stripe. Rothstein argues that housing segregation in the US has been the intentional outcome of policy decisions made at every … [Read more...]
People Over Process: Why Democracy Doesn’t Justify Exclusion
Some people accept the idea that restrictive land use policy is just as bad as all the research suggests, but persist in supporting the status quo. They argue that if a community chooses to regulate its built environment, that choice should be respected as having moral weight because it’s the … [Read more...]
The Other Broken Window
My first article for TheFreemanOnline dealt with the “broken window fallacy.” But in the literature on social theory, there’s actually another important idea that also uses the metaphor of a “broken window.”In his comment on The Freeman’s Facebook page, Flavio Ortigao raised this point when he … [Read more...]
Parking In A DC Bike Lane Is Extremely Cost-effective, For Drivers
This month, the Washington Area Bicyclist Association (WABA) published an analysis citing traffic ticket data to illustrate the following point:Of the 723,237 parking tickets issued in this 5 month period, only 2,420 were for parking in bike lanes. That’s about 3 out of every 1,000 tickets. That … [Read more...]
The Cato Institute Goes After Arbitrary Historic Preservation Laws
Historic preservation rules are part of the regulatory framework of most major American cities. But the historic districts in which they are generally applied get little inquiry from economists, meaning little is known about their nationwide scope and economic impact. And even between municipalities … [Read more...]
The Stealth Guide To Nimbyville
Hovering somewhere just beyond all the land use zoning regulations, building codes, finance mechanisms, aspirational comprehensive municipal plans, state mandates, and endless NIMBYism lies… reality.If you happen to want to live in certain parts of coastal California you need to come … [Read more...]