Urbanists have increasingly turned to state-level preemption as a tool for reducing the barriers to new housing supply, recognizing the improved incentives for land-use policy relative to the local level. In a piece for the Atlantic Cities, Nolan sums up the potential for preemption to address … [Read more...]
old posts
Before there was a Market Urbanism blog, I posted short thoughts on the Congress for New Urbanism group blog. I am in the process of recovering as many of the posts as possible through the Internet Archive (archive.org). My 2015 posts are here. I hope to gradually recover the earlier posts as … [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...]
A Guide to Urban Development [Guia de Gestão Urbana]
![A Guide to Urban Development [Guia de Gestão Urbana]](https://i0.wp.com/ec2-34-201-95-206.compute-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GGU_COVER.png?fit=614%2C408)
Caos Planejado, in conjunction with Editora BEI/ArqFuturo, recently published A Guide to Urban Development (Guia de Gestão Urbana) by Anthony Ling. The book offers best practices for urban design and although it was written for a Brazilian audience, many of its recommendations have universal … [Read more...]
Only In California: Twisting an Anti-Exclusionary Law To Rationalize Exclusion
As a Market Urbanism reader, you are hopefully fluent in the problems of exclusionary zoning. If you're new to the term, there are some good pieces on the topic here and here. Basically: exclusionary zoning is the use of zoning to price people out of a community. The classic example is minimum … [Read more...]
Does Home-sharing Create Negative Externalities?
A decade or two ago, a traveler who wished to stay in a city temporarily had no alternative to a hotel. Even if the owner of a house or condominium wished to rent out a room for a short period of time, the costs of advertising in a newspaper would have at least partially canceled out the … [Read more...]
A response to Interfluidity
Steve Randy Waldman posted some criticisms of the market urbanist position on Interfluidity. The post was interesting, though I took issue with a few specific points. The following are my responses. Regulatory Authority as a Property RightThe customary property rights surrounding homeownership … [Read more...]