reference library

/reference library
reference library2018-06-08T14:23:35-07:00

This website features a collection of links to outside resources, many of which were cited in The Captured Economy, for readers interested in learning more about regressive regulation.

To filter the reference library by topic, please use the links on a topic page or open this page on a full-size screen and use the provided menu.

Property Rights and Urban Form

Simeon Djankov, Edward L. Glaeser, Valeria Perotti, and Andrei Shleifer

NBER

May 2021

How do the different elements in the standard bundle of property rights, including those of possession and transfer, influence the shape of cities? This paper incorporates insecure property rights into…
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Single-Family Zoning Reform: An Analysis of SB 1120

David Garcia, Julian Tucker, and Isaac Schmidt

Terner Center for Housing Innovation

July 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated California’s housing crisis by heightening social and economic inequalities, with disparate impact on those unable to perform their jobs. The strong likelihood of a prolonged…
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Inclusionary Zoning and Housing Market Outcomes

Emily Hamilton

Mercatus Center

September 2019

As regions across the United States are experiencing high and rising house prices, inclusionary zoning is increasing in popularity as a tool to increase the availability of affordable housing for…
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The Spatial Mismatch Between Innovation and Joblessness

Edward L. Glaeser and Naomi Hausman

NBER

May 2019

American technological creativity is geographically concentrated in areas that are generally distant from the country’s most persistent pockets of joblessness. Could a more even spatial distribution of innovation reduce American…
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Is inclusionary Zoning inclusionary? A Guide for Practitioners

Heather L. Schwartz, Liisa Ecola, Kristin J. Leuschner, and Aaron Kofner

RAND Corporation

2012

Inclusionary zoning (IZ) has become an increasingly popular tool for providing affordable housing in an economically integrative manner. IZ policies typically require developers to set aside a proportion of units…
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Silver Bullet or Trojan Horse? The Effects of Inclusionary Zoning on Local Housing Markets

Jenny Schuetz, Rachel Meltzer, and Vicki Been

NYU Law School

June 9, 2008

Many local governments are adopting inclusionary zoning (IZ) as a means of producing affordable housing without direct public subsidies. In this paper, we use panel data on IZ in the…
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Housing Supply Dynamics under Rent Control: What Can Evictions Tell Us?

Brian J. Asquith

AEA Papers and Proceedings

May 2019

Measuring how rent-controlled landlords change their housing supply in response to rent increases is difficult, because new construction is automatically exempt. This paper explores evictions as a barometer for landlords’…
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Should Law Subsidize Driving?

Gregory H. Shill

SSRN

March 1, 2019

A century ago, captains of industry and their allies in government launched a social experiment in urban America: the abandonment of mass transit in favor of a new personal technology,…
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Amenities, Risk, and Flood Insurance Reform

V. Kerry Smith and Ben Whitmore

NBER

February 2019

This paper provides the first, comprehensive evidence on the question of whether the subsidized flood insurance rates are needed to meet the affordability goal of the National Flood Insurance Program….
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Amenities, Affordability, and Housing Vouchers

David S. Bieri and Casey Dawkins

Journal of Regional Science

June 2018

An unprecedented surge in U.S. rental demand in the decade since the housing crisis has raised the specter of a rental affordability crisis, the brunt of which is borne by…
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The Case for Preserving Costa-Hawkins: Three Ways Rent Control Reduces the Supply of Rental Housing

Kenneth T. Rosen

UC Berkeley Fisher Center

September 1, 2018

In order to highlight the significance of why this policy change would be detrimental for the California housing market, it is critical to understand the ways that rent control reduces…
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Recalibrating Local Politics to Increase the Supply of Housing

Chris Elmendorf

Regulation

Summer 2019

Is there a way for states to usefully recalibrate the local politics of land use while accepting homeowners as they are? This essay argues that state planning mandates could be…
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Should Law Subsidize Driving?

Author name here

University of Iowa

March 19, 2019

“A century ago, captains of industry and their allies in government launched a social experiment in urban America: the abandonment of mass transit in favor of a new personal technology,…
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Expanding the Supply of Affordable Housing for Low-Wage Workers

Michela Zonta

Expanding the Supply of Affordable Housing for Low-Wage Workers

August 10 2020

Policymakers must focus on improving the jobs-housing fit—or connecting jobs with affordable housing—which is essential for working families and for the economy. Michela Zonta Expanding the Supply of Affordable Housing…
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Neighborhood Effects and Housing Vouchers

Morris A. Davis, Jesse M. Gregory, Daniel A. Hartley & Kegon T.K. Tan

NBER

February 2021

Researchers and policy-makers have explored the possibility of restricting the use of housing vouchers to neighborhoods that may positively affect the outcomes of children. Using the framework of a dynamic…
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Liberalizing Land Use Regulations: The Case of Houston

Nolan Gray and Jessie McBirney

Liberalizing Land Use Regulations: The Case of Houston

August 2020

The experience of Houston reaffirms much of what researchers already know: minimum-lot-size regulations limit urban development, driving up lot sizes and thereby increasing housing prices. By liberalizing these rules, the…
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The Optimal distribution of population across cities

David Albouy, Kristian Behrens ,Frédéric Robert-Nicoud, and Nathan Seegert

Journal of Urban Economics

March 2019

We develop an urban model that incorporates: (1) heterogeneous sites; (2) fiscal and urban externalities; and (3) an endogenous number of cities, i.e., the extensive margin of urban development. Within-…
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The New State Zoning: Land Use Preemption Amid a Housing Crisis

John Infranca

Boston College Law Review

March 28, 2019

Commentators have long decried the pernicious effects that overly restrictive land use regulations, which stifle new development, have on housing supply and affordability, regional and national economic growth, social mobility,…
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Zoned Out: How Zoning Law Undermines Family Law’s Functional Turn

Kate Redburn

Yale Law Journal

June 2019

A fatal conflict in the legal definition of family lurks at the intersection of family law and zoning law. Family law doctrines have increasingly embraced the claims of “functional families”—those…
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Balancing the “Zoning Budget”

David Schleicher

Yale Law School

2011

The politics of urban land use frustrate even the best intentions. A number of cities have made strong political commitments to increasing their local housing supply in the face of…
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Upzoning Chicago: Impacts of a Zoning Reform on Property Values and Housing Construction

Yonah Freemark

Urban Affairs Review

January 29, 2019

What are the local-level impacts of zoning change? I study recent Chicago upzonings that increased allowed densities and reduced parking requirements in a manner exogenous of development plans and neighborhood…
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Upzoning Chicago: Impacts of a Zoning Reform on Property Values and Housing Construction

Yonah Freemark

Urban Affairs Review

January 29, 2019

What are the local-level impacts of zoning change? I study recent Chicago upzonings that increased allowed densities and reduced parking requirements in a manner exogenous of development plans and neighborhood…
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Balancing Priorities

National Low Income Housing Coalition

National Low Income Housing Coalition/p>

october 2018

The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) is the largest national affordable housing program in the U.S. By 2030, nearly half a million current LIHTC units, or nearly a quarter of…
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A Hidden Gift to Manufacturing

Roderick M. Hills Jr and David Schleicher

Regulation

April 2010

Many urban areas use non-cumulative zoning – zoning exclusive to one use (typically manufacturing) that prohibits other uses even if those uses are considered less noxious. Proponents of this zoning…
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How Land Use Law Impedes Transportation Innovation

David Schleicher

Yale Law School

April 2016

Transportation scholars have long known that infrastructure investments both depend upon current land use patterns and spur changes in those patterns. There is a massive literature built around what are…
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The Price of Residential Land for Counties, ZIP Codes, and Census Tracts in the United States

Morris A. Davis, Stephen D. Oliner, Will Larson, and Jessica Shui

American Enterprise Institute

January 2019

We use data on the appraised land value from a data set of more than 16 million appraisals to produce annual estimates of the average price of land used in…
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When Do Renters Behave Like Homeowners? High Rent, Price Anxiety, and NIMBYism

Michael Hankinson

American Political Science Review

August 2018

How does spatial scale affect support for public policy? Does supporting housing citywide but “Not In My Back Yard” (NIMBY) help explain why housing has become increasingly difficult to build…
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Substance Use Disorder Treatment Centers and Property Values

Brady P. Horn, Aakrit Joshi, and Johanna Catherine Maclean

NBER

January 2019

Substance use disorders (SUDs) are a major social concern in the United States and other developed countries. There is an extensive economic literature estimating the social costs associated with SUDs…
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Housing policies to combat the affordability crisis

Jack Favilukis, Pierre Mabille, Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh

Vox EU

October 2019e

 

Housing affordability is a leading challenge for local policymakers around the world, yet a coherent framework for analysing the various policy options is lacking. This column builds such a framework…
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Supply, Demand and the Challenge of Local Control

Alicia Sasser Modestino, Clark Ziegler, Tom Hopper, Calandra Clark, Lucas Munson, Mark Melnik, Carrie Bernstein, and Abby Raisz

The Greater Boston Housing Report Card 2019

June 2019

The Greater Boston Housing Report Card serves as an annual assessment of housing conditions in Greater Boston and what needs to be done to meet the region’s goals for current…
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Stuck! The Law and Economics of Residential Stagnation

David Schleicher

The Yale Law Journal

January 2017

This Article advances two central claims. First, declining interstate mobility rates create problems for federal macroeconomic policymaking. Low rates of interstate mobility make it harder for the Federal Reserve to…
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Planning an Affordable City

Roderick M Hills and David Schleicher

Iowa Law Review

2015

First, we argue in Part III.A that binding, comprehensive plans allow legislators to create “contracts” across electoral districts that are otherwise impossible when zoning proceeds through piecemeal lot-by-lot bargaining. In…
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Perspectives: Practitioners Weigh in on Drivers of Rising Housing Construction Costs in San Francisco

Carolina Reid and Hayley Raetz |

Berkley University Terner Center

Publication date her

In this brief, we present findings from interviews and focus groups with developers, general contractors, architects and nonprofits working to build both affordable and market-rate housing in San Francisco. The…
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The Steep Cost of Using Noncumulative Zoning to Preserve Land for Urban Manufacturing

Roderick M. Hills Jr and David Schleicher

The Univerity of Chicago Law Review

2010

In this Article, we argue that non-cumulative zoning is an idea whose time has passed, if there ever was a convincing case for it at all. The two major justifications…
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Removing Barriers to Accessing High-Productivity Places

Daniel Shoag

Hamilton Project

January, 2019

Regulatory constraints on housing production have shut millions of Americans out of the country’s most productive labor markets. Historically, Americans have moved to the parts of the country that offered…
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CityLab University: Inclusionary Zoning

Benjamin Schneider

CityLab

July 17, 2018

In D.C. and around the country, inclusionary zoning (also sometimes called “inclusionary housing”), is an increasingly popular way to produce affordable housing through the private market. And while these programs…
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Like Uber, but for Local Government Law: The Future of Local Regulation of the Sharing Economy

David Schleicher

Ohio State Law Journal

2015

If sharing firms prevail in the current fights over the right to operate (and indications suggest they will), it is unlikely that cities and states will ignore them. Instead, as…
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Racial Segregation in Housing Markets and the Erosion of Black Wealth

Prottoy A. Akbar, Sijie Li, Allison Shertzer, and Randall P. Walsh

NBER

May 2019

Housing is the most important asset for the vast majority of American households and a key driver of racial disparities in wealth. This paper studies how residential segregation by race…
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Do Minimum-Lot-Size Regulations Limit Housing Supply in Texas?

Nolan Gray and Salim Furth

Mercatus Center

May 1, 2019

With a relatively light regulatory hand on land use, the Texas suburbs are more responsive to market forces than most metro areas. Even so, some of their single-family lots are…
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Gentrification in the wake of a hurricane: New Orleans after Katrina

Eric Joseph van Hold and Christopher K Wyczalkowski

Urban Studies Journal

August 2018

Hurricane Katrina struck the city of New Orleans in August of 2005, devastating the built environment and displacing nearly one-third of the city’s residents. Despite the considerable literature that exists…
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The Irony of Inclusionary Zoning

Robert C. Ellickson

Southern California Law Review

1983

Between 1973 and 1980, the average sale price of a single-family house in the five-county Los Angeles area rose from $40,700 to $115,000, or by 183%. This increase not only…
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Have Housing Prices Risen Faster in Portland Than Elsewhere?

Anthony Downs

Housing Policy Debate

2002

The Portland, OR, region has had a strong urban growth boundary (UGB) since 1979, so observers have focused on the relationship between its UGB and home prices, which rose sharply…
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Impact Fees and Housing Affordability

Vicki Been

Cityscape

2005

Approximately 60 percent of U.S. cities with more than 25,000 residents now impose impact fees to fund infrastructure needed to service new housing and other development. In 89 jurisdictions selected…
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Comparing Forecasting Methods: Expert Land Use Panel vs. Simple Land use Allocation Model

Reid Ewing and Richard J. Kuzmyak

National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education

2005

An Expert Land Use Panel was used to forecast the land use impacts of a major highway project in the Washington, DC area, the Inter-County Connector. What makes this panel…
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Smart Growth in Maryland: Looking Forward and Looking Back

Gerrit Knaap and John Frece

Idaho Law Review

2007

Spring of 2007 will mark the 10th anniversary of the passage of Maryland’s Smart Growth and Neighborhood Conservation Initiative; an effort designed to discourage sprawl development, foster more compact communities,…
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Opening San Diego’s Door to Lower Housing Costs

Cathy L. Gallagher, Lynn Reaser, Peggy Crane, Dieter Mauerman, Mark Undesser, and Nic Herbig

Fermanian Business and Economic Institute at PLNU

2014

The total cost of regulation amounts to about forty percent of the cost of housing across the various price segments in all of San Diego County…This study indicates that approximately…
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Varying the Variance: How New York City Can Solve Its Housing Crisis and Optimize Land Use to Serve the Public Interest

Nathan T. Boone

Brooklyn Law Review

2016

Urban America requires a solution to its affordable housing crisis, and combined with the above data, Census Bureau reports demonstrate that New York City needs a solution more than most…
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Administrative Discretion in Zoning

NA

Harvard Law Review

January 1969

Many urban designers today severely criticize traditional, “Euclidean” zoning theory for failing to accord administrative discretion a sufficiently important role. Zoning codes limit land uses and the size and location…
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Effects of an Urban Growth Management System on Land Values

Michael E. Gleeson

Land Economics

August 1979

These examples of three of the best known and oldest growth management systems illustrate that, at both the metropolitan and submetropolitan level, a general effect of such systems can be…
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The Price Effects of Urban Growth Boundaries in Metropolitan Portland, Oregon

Gerrit J. Knaap

Land Economics

February 1985

The late 1960s and early 1970s brought increasing public concern over environmental issues such as rising population growth, resource depletion, and the overall quality of life. The State of Oregon,…
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Mitigating the Price Effects of Growth Control: A Case Study of Davis, California

Peter M. Zorn, David E. Hansen, and Seymour I. Schwartz

Land Economics

February 1986

Regardless of the community’s rationale for limiting growth, the result may be the exclusion of poor households from the community. Studies of growth control support the assertion that growth control…
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No Room! No Room! The Costs of the British Town and Country Planning System

Alan Evans

IEA

July 15, 1988

The British Town and Country planning system was originally designed to guide rather than restrict development. It has grown into a system which restricts development across the board. This has…
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Land Use Reform Through Performance Zoning

William D. Eggers

Reason Foundation

May 1990

In short, it is time to discard the tired baggage of conventional zoning and start afresh with a new approach to land-use policy. What is needed are land-use policies that…
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The stochastic city

Dennis R.Capozza and Robert W.Helsley

Journal of Urban Economics

September 1990

This paper analyzes a simple model of an urban area with growth and uncertainty…Even though investors are risk neutral, uncertainty affects both land rents and land prices in equilibrium because…
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Impact fees, exclusionary zoning, and the density of new development

Joseph Gyourko

Journal of Urban Economics

September 1991

The increasing use of impact fees represents a new trend in local fiscal policy which can have important effects on real estate markets. The ramifications for economic efficiency as well…
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Repairing the Ladder: Toward a New Housing Paradigm

Howard Husock

Reason Foundation

July 1996

The problems of public housing and related subsidy programs are less the result of poor maintenance and design than a fundamental misunderstanding of the role which housing plays in social…
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Market Oriented Planning: Principles and Tools

Samuel Staley and Lynn Scarlett

Reason Foundation

November 1997

Under urban planning in the United States, virtually every major development is subjected to the vagaries of the rezoning process and the uncertainties associated with legislative review by planning boards…
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The Sprawling of America: In Defense of a Dynamic City

Samuel Staley

Reason Foundation

January 1999

Urban sprawl has sparked a national debate over land-use policy. At least 19 states have established either state growth-management laws or task forces to protect farmland and open space. Dozens…
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“Urban Sprawl” and the Michigan Landscape: A Market-Oriented Approach

Samuel Staley

Reason Foundation

September 1999

Local and state government officials and environmental activists use the term to create images of disorder, chaos, and irrational decision making about land use by Michigan’s private landowners. These officials…
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A Line in the Land: Urban-growth Boundaries, Smart Growth, and Housing Affordability

Samuel R. Staley, Jefferson G. Edgens, and Gerard C.S. Mildner

Reason Foundation Policy Study

October 1999

More than 100 cities and counties have adopted some form of a growth boundary—a limit on land development beyond a politically designated area—to curb sprawl, protect open space, or encourage…
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Urban-Growth Boundaries and Housing Affordability: Lessons from Portland

Samuel Staley

Reason Foundation

October 1999

Urban-growth boundaries are emerging as one of the most popular growth-management tools in the fight against suburbanization. More than 100 cities and counties have adopted them, and statewide mandates for…
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Urban Sprawl and Quality Growth in Ohio

Samuel Staley and Matthew Hisrich

Reason Foundation

December 2001

Urban sprawl has surged to the forefront of local policy debate in Ohio. Concerns about the loss of open space, farm productivity, traffic congestion, and rising public-service costs have led…
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Smart Growth and Housing Affordability: Evidence from Statewide Planning Laws

Samuel Staley and Leonard Gilroy

Reason Foundation

January 2002

State legislatures across the nation are considering statewide planning reforms to grapple with population and urban growth on the metropolitan fringe. Many of these efforts are driven by theoretical concepts…
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Smart Growth in Action: Housing Capacity and Development in Ventura County

William Fulton, Chris Williamson, Kathleen Mallory and Jeff Jones

Reason Foundation

January 2002

Urban growth has emerged as a touchstone policy issue, particularly on the state and local levels, ushering in an unprecedented new wave of growth-management and growth-control legislation. More than a…
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The Link Between Growth Management and Housing Affordability: The Academic Evidence

Arthur C. Nelson, Rolf Pendall, Casey J. Dawkins, and Gerrit J. Knaap

Brookings Institution

February 2002

Rising concerns about traffic congestion, loss of farmland, urban disinvestment, and the costs of public infrastructure have led an increasing number of state and local governments to adopt new policies…
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Evaluating the Effectiveness of Regulatory Growth Management Programs: An Analytic Framework

John I. Carruthers

Journal of Planning Education and Research

June 2002

This article develops an analytic framework for evaluating the effectiveness of regulatory growth management programs. First, the literature review assembles a large body of recent research examining the evolution of…
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The Impact of Building Restrictions on Housing Affordability

Edward L. Glaeser and Joseph Gyourko

Federal Reserve Bank of New York Economic Policy Review 9, no. 2 (2003): 21–39

January 2003

The bulk of the evidence marshaled in this paper suggests that zoning, and other land-use controls, are more responsible for high prices where we see them. There is a huge…
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San Jose Demonstrates the Limits of Urban Growth Boundaries and Urban Rail

Randall O'Toole

Reason Foundation

March 1, 2003

The theory behind both urban-growth boundaries and light rail systems seems sensible at first. Growth boundaries stop development from “sprawling” beyond the limits it sets and forces new development and…
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Smart Growth in Action, Part II: Case Studies in Housing Capacity and Development from Ventura County, California

Geoffrey Segal, William Fulton, Susan Weaver and Lily Okamura

Reason Foundation

May 1, 2003

This report is the second portion of a two-part study that attempts to help fill this void by examining the implementation of growth management techniques in Ventura County, California, a…
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Reinvestment in the housing stock: the role of construction costs and the supply side

Joseph Gyourko and Albert Saiz

Journal of Urban Economics

March 2004

While rational real estate entrepreneurs generally will not redevelop if asset values are below replacement costs, we investigate whether homeowners who have investment and consumption motivations behave similarly. We use…
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Housing Supply and Affordability: Do Affordable Housing Mandates Work?

Benjamin Powell and Edward Stringham

Reason Foundation

April 1, 2004

California and many urban areas nationwide face a housing affordability crisis. New housing production has chronically failed to meet housing needs, causing housing prices to escalate. Faced with demands to…
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Affordable Housing in Monterrey County: Analyzing the General Plan Update and Applied Development Economics Report

Benjamin Powell, Edward Stringham and Adam Summers

Reason Foundation

August 1, 2004

This report analyzes the old proposed General Plan Update and the Economic Impact Analysis (EIA) conducted by Applied Development Economics, Inc. We find that the economic analysis for the county…
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The Effect of Urban Containment and Mandatory Housing Elements on Racial Segregation in US Metropolitan Areas, 1990–2000

Arthur C. Nelson, Thomas W. Sanchez, and Casey J. Dawkins

Journal of Urban Affairs

August 6, 2004

Urban containment and state‐imposed mandatory housing elements in comprehensive land use plans attempt to reshape development patterns. Urban containment programs reign in the outward expansion of urban areas by restricting…
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Why Have Housing Prices Gone Up?

Edward L. Glaeser, Joseph Gyourko, and Raven E. Saks

American Economic Review

February 2005

Since 1950, housing prices have risen regularly by almost two percent per year. Between 1950 and 1970, this increase reflects rising housing quality and construction costs. Since 1970, this increase…
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Urban Land Value with Site Density Restriction: An Empirical Study of Beijing, China

Sun Liang and Tu Yong

National University of Singapore

March 2005

With an ideology of setting up a socialist market economy with China’s characteristics, land as one of the important factors of production has been in great need of institutional mechanism…
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New Approaches to Affordable Housing

Chris Fiscelli

Reason Foundation

May 1, 2005

Housing has long been one of the staples of American society and the United States’ economic prowess has afforded its citizens an abundance of safe and decent housing. The national…
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How Overregulation Creates Sprawl (Even in a City without Zoning)

Michael Lewyn

George Washington University Law School

October 28, 2005

Numerous commentators have suggested that the spread-out, automobile-dependent urban form (often referred to as “sprawl”) that dominates metropolitan America is at least partially caused by government regulation of land use….
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The Effects of Moratoria on Residential Development: Evidence from Harford, Howard, and Montgomery Counties

Antonio M. Bento

National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education

February 2006

During the last decade, the state of Maryland was one of the fastest growing states in the United States. In response, the state has implemented an aggressive “smart growth” initiative….
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Estimating Effects of an Urban Growth Boundary on Land Development

Seong-Hoo Cho, Zhuo Chen, Steven T. Yen, and David B. Eastwood

Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics

August 2006

This study estimates the effects of an urban growth boundary (UGB) on land development decisions in Knox County, TN. With combined effects of increased land development within the city boundary…
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A Framework for Quantitative Smart Growth in Land Development

Glenn Moglen, Steven Gabriel, and Jose Faria

Journal of The American Water Resources Association

June 8, 2007

Increasing awareness about the problems brought on by urban sprawl has led to proactive measures to guide future development. Such efforts have largely been grouped under the term, Smart Growth….
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Impact of Environmental Regulatory Systems on Housing Affordability

John Randolph, Arthur C. Nelson, Joseph M. Schilling, Jonathan Logan, Mark Nowak, and James M. McElfish

Department of Housing and Urban Development

October 2007

By some projections, the United States will add 100 million people faster than any country on the planet except India. This translates into a net increase of about 40 million…
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State Growth Management: Intergovernmental Frameworks and Policy Objectives

Scott A. Bollens

Journal of the American Planning Association

November 26, 2007

This paper contrasts the intergovernmental structures and development goals of state growth programs initiated since 1970 in thirteen states. Many of these state and nonlocal growth management strategies seek to…
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Do Growth Controls Work?: A New Assessment

John D. Landis

Journal of the American Planning Association

November 26, 2007

This article presents a partial evaluation of local growth controls as applied in seven mid-size California cities: Camarillo, Livermore, Lodi, Red-lands, San Luis Obispo, Thousand Oaks, and Walnut Creek. Through…
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Housing Market Impacts of Inclusionary Zoning

Gerrit-Jan Knaap, Antonio Bento, and Scott Lowe

National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education

February 2008

Many communities across the country face affordable housing challenges. An increasing number of communities are considering inclusionary zoning as a response. Inclusionary zoning programs, which require developers to sell a…
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Managing Growth With Priority Funding Areas: A Good Idea Whose Time Has Yet to Come

Rebecca Lewis, Gerrit Knaap, and Jungyul Sohn

Journal of the American Planning Association

October 1, 2009

In 1997, the State of Maryland adopted a bold new approach to growth management based on a novel instrument: priority funding areas (PFAs). PFAs contain growth by directing state spending…
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Reducing Poverty and Economic Disress after ARRA: Potential Roles for Place-Conscious Strategies

Manuel Pastor and Margery Austin Turner

Urban Institute

April 14, 2010

In what follows, we lay out the case for new, place-conscious strategies. We begin by reviewing the well-documented case that place does indeed matter—that where you grow up affects where…
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Did Credit Market Policies Cause the Housing Bubble?

Edward Glaeser, Joshua Gottlieb, and Joseph Gyourko

Rappaport Institute/Taubman Center Policy Brief

May 5, 2010

Many economists have argued that aspects of the credit market, including low interest rates, can explain the boom. The evidence summarized in this Policy Brief casts doubt on the view…
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The Quiet Revolution Revived: Sustainable Design, Land Use Regulation, and the States

Sara C. Bronin

Environmental Law and Policy Annual Review

August 2010

In 1971, The Quiet Revolution in Land Use Control inspired numerous scholarly debates about the states’ role in land use regulation. In that book, Fred Bosselman and David Callies recognized…
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The Housing Market Effects of Discrete Land Use Regulations: Evidence from the California Coastal Boundary Zone

Matthew E. Kahn, Ryan Vaughn, and Jonathan Zasloffc

Journal of Housing Economics

December 2010

The California Coastal Act is a distinctive piece of land use regulation. Its intent is to preserve a unique environmental asset. This paper has used two different data sets to…
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Barriers to Development Inside Maryland’s PFAs: Perspectives of Planners, Developers, and Advocates

Casey Dawkins, Jason Sartori, and Gerrit-Jan Knaap

National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education

January 18, 2012

This study presents a summary of stakeholder perspectives on the effectiveness of Maryland’s Priority Funding Areas and barriers to growth within PFAs. It relies upon responses to a telephone survey…
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City Unplanning

David Schleicher

Yale Law Journal

January 2013

Generations of scholarship on the political economy of land use have tried to explain a world in which tony suburbs use zoning to keep out development but big cities allow…
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Japanese Zoning

NA

Urban kchoze

April 6, 2014

This might be the single most interesting characteristic of Japanese zoning that differentiates it from zoning in North America. Here, cities are essentially the sole masters of their zoning, they…
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Preserving History or Hindering Growth? The Heterogeneous Effects of Historic Districts on Local Housing Markets in New York City

Vicki Been, Ingrid Gould Ellen, Michael Gedal, Edward Glaeser, Brian J. McCabe

NBER

September 2014

Since Brooklyn Heights was designated as New York City’s first landmarked neighborhood in 1965, the Landmarks Preservation Commission has designated 120 historic neighborhoods in the city. This paper develops a…
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Mapping Opportunity: A Critical Assessment

Eli Knapp, Gerrit-Jan Knaap, and Chao Liu

National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education

October 30, 2014

A renewed interest has emerged on spatial opportunity structures and their role in shaping housing policy, community development, and equity planning. To this end, many have tried to quantify the…
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Affordable Housing Needs Assessment: Phase I

Peter A. Tatian and Elizabeth Oo

Urban Institute

November 16, 2014

This report is the first part of an affordable housing needs assessment for the DC Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development. We examined the District of…
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Land-Use Restrictions and Other Barriers to Growth

Edward Glaeser

Cato Institute

January 2015

Housing supply in desirable areas is being prevented by regulatory, not natural, barriers. Over the past half century, the United States has gone through a property rights revolution. In the…
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Building a Vibrant Economy in Washington, DC: Challenges and Choices for the New Mayor

Christina (Plerhoples) Stacy, Brett Theodos, and Helen Ho

Urban Institute

April 13, 2015

Washington, DC, has gained much from its unique position as the capital of the United States, but it has not fully harnessed its opportunities for equitable and resilient economic growth….
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Why Do Cities Matter? Local Growth and Aggregate Growth

Enrico Moretti and Chiang-Tai Hsieh

National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper

May 2015

We study how growth of cities determines the growth of nations. Using a spatial equilibrium model and data on 220 US metropolitan areas from 1964 to 2009, we first estimate…
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Planning an Affordable City

Roderick Hills and David Schleicher

Iowa Law Journal

November 2015

America faces a housing affordability crisis in its most economically dynamic cities, including metropolises like New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Boston where prices are rising faster than…
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How Land-Use Regulation Undermines Affordable Housing

Sanford Ikeda and Emily Washington

Mercatus Center

November 2015

To varying degrees, most municipalities regulate urban development with zoning, density restrictions, and parking requirements. Such policies restrict the housing supply and urban density relative to what it could be…
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