> In some places, anti-densification rules continue to raise property values, and in these places we should expect the Downzoning to be as politically robust as it has been for the last century: it really does give property owners something they want.
I have to wonder to what extent that's actually true. To begin with, if you have a single family home in an area with high demand, upzoning could make someone willing to pay you even more than the house is currently worth because they could still turn a profit when turning it into ten or twenty times as much housing on the same lot. In other words, the value of the house may go down but the value of the land goes up when you can build more on it since that makes it more valuable.
On top of that, higher housing prices don't necessarily equate to a better life or even more money. If your house is worth more but you still need a place to live then you can't sell it, unless you are planning to sell it soon in which case upzoning gets you more money because developers start bidding on your house before the new housing the upzoning allows to be built is on the market yet.
If not, it's not just your house that costs more. The other ones do too, which increases cost of living. Local shops have to pay higher rents and pass on that cost to you, or can't find local workers because young people can't afford local rent, so they have to close down. Then you get higher local unemployment and more crime and homelessness. You might even lose your own job because your employer moved out. What do you think drives offshoring? High domestic costs.
And if people are only thinking about the first order effects then they might imagine downzoning is to their advantage when it isn't. Which makes them support it but only until someone shows them the math.
The one thing that makes assumptions about free market forces miss the mark is the fact that ideal markets don’t exist in the real world.
I case of housing, in the US, we’re as far from free market as possible. So making assumptions about what will happen if we build more based on a naive supply and demand model isn’t going to work.
A paradigm shift is to think in terms of power distribution and policy incentives. Why would a homeowner support zoning reforms? Even if they become a minority, will they be able to get the others to not vote or vote against their own interests?
Sounds like a great test case for public intervention to shake up a bad market equilibrium: acquire large areas of land and build new cities and neighborhoods unencumbered by land use and zoning bylaws.
The places where cities make sense are generally the places where they already are. You could hypothetically build the trappings of a new city in North Dakota or West Texas, but who is going to move to a place which is just a bunch of empty buildings surrounded by farmland? You can already buy a house in such places for less than it costs for one in a major city but there is a reason that people don't.
Whereas if you would just rezone the areas with high demand to allow new construction to actually happen there then you don't need the government to raise and spend a ton of money, all you need them to do is to stop prohibiting the thing people would otherwise be doing.
> In some places, anti-densification rules continue to raise property values, and in these places we should expect the Downzoning to be as politically robust as it has been for the last century: it really does give property owners something they want.
I have to wonder to what extent that's actually true. To begin with, if you have a single family home in an area with high demand, upzoning could make someone willing to pay you even more than the house is currently worth because they could still turn a profit when turning it into ten or twenty times as much housing on the same lot. In other words, the value of the house may go down but the value of the land goes up when you can build more on it since that makes it more valuable.
On top of that, higher housing prices don't necessarily equate to a better life or even more money. If your house is worth more but you still need a place to live then you can't sell it, unless you are planning to sell it soon in which case upzoning gets you more money because developers start bidding on your house before the new housing the upzoning allows to be built is on the market yet.
If not, it's not just your house that costs more. The other ones do too, which increases cost of living. Local shops have to pay higher rents and pass on that cost to you, or can't find local workers because young people can't afford local rent, so they have to close down. Then you get higher local unemployment and more crime and homelessness. You might even lose your own job because your employer moved out. What do you think drives offshoring? High domestic costs.
And if people are only thinking about the first order effects then they might imagine downzoning is to their advantage when it isn't. Which makes them support it but only until someone shows them the math.
The one thing that makes assumptions about free market forces miss the mark is the fact that ideal markets don’t exist in the real world.
I case of housing, in the US, we’re as far from free market as possible. So making assumptions about what will happen if we build more based on a naive supply and demand model isn’t going to work.
A paradigm shift is to think in terms of power distribution and policy incentives. Why would a homeowner support zoning reforms? Even if they become a minority, will they be able to get the others to not vote or vote against their own interests?
The system caps its own growth.
Sounds like a great test case for public intervention to shake up a bad market equilibrium: acquire large areas of land and build new cities and neighborhoods unencumbered by land use and zoning bylaws.
The places where cities make sense are generally the places where they already are. You could hypothetically build the trappings of a new city in North Dakota or West Texas, but who is going to move to a place which is just a bunch of empty buildings surrounded by farmland? You can already buy a house in such places for less than it costs for one in a major city but there is a reason that people don't.
Whereas if you would just rezone the areas with high demand to allow new construction to actually happen there then you don't need the government to raise and spend a ton of money, all you need them to do is to stop prohibiting the thing people would otherwise be doing.
We built a world that genuinely made a generation of people more or less happy.
And it turns out happiness makes you indifferent toward the future and the people who have to live in it.