One thing we could do as a country that could help reduce carbon
emissions in a relatively pain-free way would be to ease regulations
around what you’re allowed to build where.
That’s from Matt Yglesias, and I loved his take on the debates.
Addendum: Here is Virginia Postrel as well, and of course we are all wishing her the best in her struggle with breast cancer.
His post reminds me of Jane Jacobs. Even liberals, especially younger ones, love her ideas.
The Virginia Postrel article he linked to was far more insightful and topical than his was. It is eminently affordable to live in the bulk of the US, including in cities. The exception is the blue states, and I agree with Virginia that it may well not be a coincidence. It is very easy to talk about a vanishing middle class when the middle class can’t afford to live in your overregulated city.
If the point is to ensure that development is at a sufficient density to significantly reduce emissions from car and home energy use, then by all means remove the kind of regulations that restrict density, but you really do also need the kind of regulations that restrict sprawl. To simply “ease regulations around what you’re allowed to build where” without recognising the impacts of different regulations on what you’re trying to do will not help.
The data that is referenced for the graph by Virgina Postrel is at
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/glaeser/
papers/Manhattan.pdf
In the paper an implied tax for zoning regulations is calculated for each city. San Francisco is the highest at 53%, New York is only 12%, while Washington DC which has a lot of restrictions to preserve historic neighborhoods is 22%. I can’t track down the source of the graph by Ryan Morris.
As I wrote in 2001:
What property owners think of laissez-faire property rights tends to depend on their self-interest, which generally varies with the degree of existing development.
Owners of undeveloped land mostly oppose restrictions on their freedom to build on it.
Homeowners in the middle of nowhere frequently find it in their interest to let their neighbors have fairly free rein in developing their land. That’s because higher population densities would raise their own property values by making it economically feasible to bring to their district such amenities as paved roads, sewer lines, and shopping.
As density increases, however, a turning point is typically reached. After a certain point, adding more housing density would hurt the property values of current homeowners. Then, homeowners often start to try to impose development restrictions on the owners of nearby empty land.
This logic suggests that support for environmentalist candidates like Al Gore would be greater in heavily developed suburbs than in rural areas.
Judging from the famous “Red vs. Blue” map of 2000 election results, that turned out to be true last November. Although Al Gore won a narrow plurality of the popular vote, George W. Bush won counties covering about four-fifths of the land area in the lower 48 states. Bush, with his anti-environmentalist views, did much better in counties where the typical landowner would benefit from new developments. In contrast, the staunchly green Gore did best in already crowded regions. Gore’s counties have about five times the population density of Bush’s counties.
Exit polls showed the GOP candidate’s vote development levels increased. Bush won 59 percent of vote in rural areas and small towns, but only 49 percent of the suburbs. In small cities, Bush took 40 percent of the vote, and in big cities just 26 percent.
http://www.isteve.com/Golf_Range_Rover_Republicans.htm
“If the point is to ensure that development is at a sufficient density to significantly reduce emissions from car and home energy use, then by all means remove the kind of regulations that restrict density, but you really do also need the kind of regulations that restrict sprawl. To simply “ease regulations around what you’re allowed to build where” without recognising the impacts of different regulations on what you’re trying to do will not help.”
Which regulations restrict sprawl? Pretty much all of the land use regulations in Southern California encourage or even mandate sprawl. They almost always mandate maximum residential densities, while never mandating minimum densities, and usually separate residential areas from the areas in which people work. I can’t think of a single land use regulation that I’ve ever seen that “restricts sprawl.” Nor can I think of how such a regulation would ever get passed in today’s political climate.
The closest you’d get is so called mixed-use zoning, but I believe that that type of zoning typically allows but does not require mixed uses. So really, its no better than no zoning (at least when it comes to “restricting sprawl”).
Doug,
“Pretty much all of the land use regulations in Southern California encourage or even mandate sprawl.”
Nice theory. Bad facts. Check out “Out West, a Paradox: Densely Packed Sprawl” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/10/AR2005081002110.html). Useful quote
“The urbanized area in and around Los Angeles has become the most densely populated place in the continental United States, according to the Census Bureau. Its density is 25 percent higher than that of New York, twice that of Washington and four times that of Atlanta, as measured by residents per square mile of urban land.”
A big purpose of maximum density zoning laws in suburbs is to keep out poorer people whose children would hurt the local public schools.
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