Works in Progress Print
Issue 21
Notes
Works in Progress is a magazine of "new and underrated ideas to improve the world". It is available to read online for free, and is newly available in a beautiful print edition, of which Issue 21 is the first. The issue includes 13 essays. Below are my brief thoughts on a few that stood out to me:
The Great Downzoning
Hughes gives a history of the rise of land use regulation, which is actually a relatively new phenomenon, but focal for those who are focused on housing costs.1 This history lesson was informative, but I want to focus on Hughes' central claim which is more contentious and provocative:
The general pattern is that the Great Downzoning was driven more by interests than by ideology. The Downzoning happened where it served the perceived interests of homeowners and failed to happen where it did not.
Now, why might I find this claim provocative? Well, at this point, zoning has become a canonical example of citizens voting against their own economic interests. In most places, renters and homeowners alike support zoning, despite it hurting the pockets of the former group. This point has been hammered down by Bryan Caplan, who wrote a book claiming voters are irrational, and another book clamoring for cities to Build, Baby, Build.2
Hughes' general argument to the contrary is that Downzoning (more easily) proliferated in already existing neighborhoods at the time (early 20th century), as welcoming development would decrease the value of each existing unit. But for entirely new neighborhoods, the highest EV play is dense developments, as developers have more parcels to sell. Thus, existing neighborhoods downzoned, whereas restrictions were far harder to enforce for greenfield (new) developments, as they were not inline with developers' interests.
Hughes provides a litany of historical examples underpinning his claim, and I find it theoretically compelling, but am presently reserving judgement. I do wonder if his claim is not truly in contention with Caplan, as I have presented it here. Perhaps Hughes' is completely correct in explaining why, when, and where zoning became so widespread. Even then, it could still be true that in housing discussions of today, self-interest plays little role in explaining the ubiquity of land use regulation, as most cases of import to us regard existing neighborhoods. Hughes must be correct that incentives do matter at least a bit for which places get downzoned and to what degree, but perhaps we are still far from the would-be rational optimum as Caplan argues. This is one question I can definitely ask Hughes directly, so I'll reach out to him via email.
1 The YIMBYs, those who would like to greatly relax land use regulations, are correct on their central empirical claim—that new developments decrease rents. The nature of supply and demand should suffice as evidence for many, but the data make the claim resoundingly clear, too. To just list one paper for now: Asquith, Mast, and Reed study the building of new apartment buildings using Zillow data, finding that rents fall by around 5-7% more for units nearby new developments, compared to those further away (control group is units 2 or more blocks away from new developments).
2 He makes the argument a bit more succinctly in this blogpost.
Two is Already Too Many
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