The hottest Zoning Substack posts right now

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🏙️ Higher love: The case for building up

Faster, Please! • 1188 implied HN points • 22 Mar 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Zoning
  1. There’s broad agreement that the US needs more housing and that regulations block much of that supply, but current fixes like small infill and accessory units are too modest to meet the scale of the problem.
  2. Cities need to build up as well as out—taller buildings are a key way to increase density and urban productivity rather than just expanding footprints.
  3. Without allowing significant height, America’s most productive cities will constrain growth, so bolder vertical development is required to unlock more housing and economic opportunity.

Follow Up to Multiple Binding Constraints Make Housing Analysis Hard

Erdmann Housing Tracker • 358 implied HN points • 09 Mar 26
đź’Ľ Business Zoning
  1. Long-term construction capacity is constrained by hysteresis, so national production can only rise slowly. That makes local demand often hit a fixed national limit, leaving some metros effectively stuck with inelastic supply.
  2. Both claims — that supply is inelastic and that costs are too high — are true and connected. Fast-growing regions bid up inputs and materials, which raises costs elsewhere and pushes those markets into a more inelastic local supply state.
  3. Local reforms like upzoning can boost housing in a city but won’t instantly increase national capacity and can raise input prices elsewhere, so benefits may be limited or temporary. Policy must distinguish short-run vs long-run effects and target the real binding constraints (inputs, financing, regulations) to enable a lasting recovery.

The Housing Crisis as a Land Crisis

Progress and Poverty • 2155 implied HN points • 05 Feb 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Zoning
  1. The housing affordability problem is really a land crisis: scarce, desirable urban land near jobs and amenities is constrained, so prices rise even though there’s plenty of land elsewhere and building costs themselves haven’t driven the spike.
  2. A long run of policy and technological changes de-densified cities, and modern shifts (congestion, tighter credit, dual-career households, more single adults) have re-concentrated demand in a few job-rich places, making central land much more valuable and harder to expand.
  3. Solving the problem means loosening the land constraint — allow more housing where demand is highest and curb land speculation with tools like land value taxes or public land leasing so the location premium benefits the community.

The Housing Ladder's Broken Promise

Progress and Poverty • 2347 implied HN points • 29 Jan 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Zoning
  1. Housing cannot be both widely affordable and treated as a perpetually appreciating investment; treating homes as investment vehicles pushes prices up and locks many people out.
  2. If the conflict is left unresolved the system can break in several bad ways—sudden crashes that wreck the economy, slow neo-feudal stagnation where landlords extract huge rents, or demographic decline as people leave or fail to form families.
  3. A practical off-ramp is to unlock supply and curb land speculation: make it easier to build (YIMBY reforms) and shift taxes onto land value (Georgist ideas) so housing becomes more affordable without unfairly wrecking current owners.

Are we underestimating who is poor?

Erdmann Housing Tracker • 2845 implied HN points • 12 Dec 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Zoning
  1. Basic living now costs a lot more than people expect, with health care, child care, transportation, and housing eating up huge shares of family budgets so many households need far more income just to get by.
  2. Decades of zoning rules and other political choices have cut housing supply and outlawed mixed, dense living, which drives up rents, pushes families to delay forming independent households, and transfers wealth from renters to lucky owners.
  3. The fix is to build more of the kinds of homes and street scenes we have made illegal—using finance to fund structures and mixed-use neighborhoods—so the basic cost of existing falls and reliance on public subsidies is reduced.
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Cool Paper on the progressive effect of upzoning

Erdmann Housing Tracker • 252 implied HN points • 09 Feb 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Zoning
  1. Targeted upzoning mainly triggers redevelopment on low-density, high-value parcels near city centers, and those changes tend to take many years to materialize.
  2. Newly added floorspace lowers rents only modestly and diffusely because supply effects spread across the region, so undoing the large scarcity-driven rent premium would require much larger, citywide building and depends a lot on migration responses.
  3. Mid-20th-century zoning now imposes large welfare losses because floorspace prices far exceed construction costs, and the post-2008 mortgage/finance shock that curtailed suburban single-family building amplified the current housing shortage.

SimParkingLot is no fun

Urben Field Notes • 448 implied HN points • 12 Jan 26
🪑 Design Zoning
  1. American parking rules have produced an enormous supply of parking—about two billion spaces—and that land use eats up more area than entire states.
  2. Parking minimums are often arbitrary, copied from other places, or set for rare peak days, which leads cities to require far more parking than is actually needed and shapes what developments are possible.
  3. The net effect is a car‑centered, asphalt‑dominated built environment where buildings are surrounded by parking, making walkable, lively neighborhoods difficult to create.

On Yglesias on Manufactured Homes

Construction Physics • 20252 implied HN points • 05 Jan 24
đź’Ľ Business Zoning
  1. Manufactured homes can reduce home construction costs compared to site-built homes.
  2. The theory that HUD code requirements caused manufactured home decline may not be accurate.
  3. Improving financing and reducing zoning restrictions may not significantly increase manufactured home construction.

Micro versus Macro thinking and affordability

Erdmann Housing Tracker • 273 implied HN points • 14 Dec 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Zoning
  1. Micro thinking focuses on surviving day-to-day and treats high housing costs as an inevitable local problem, while macro thinking asks why systems and policies produce those costs and where levers for change might be.
  2. A long run of shocks plus legal and capacity constraints—like zoning, mortgage rules, and post-2008 supply limits—have kept housing supply too low and pushed prices up, making it more expensive for people to "trade down" and worsening affordability.
  3. The affordability squeeze affects everyone but hurts lower-income families worst, so middle-class strains are a warning sign that zoning and mortgage suppression deserve serious policy scrutiny and collective solutions.

S.F.’s Marina District towers are bad, actually

Urben Field Notes • 27 implied HN points • 19 Dec 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Zoning
  1. A developer used the State Density Bonus and a zoning loophole to propose a 25‑story tower on a site zoned for four stories, effectively letting builders waive height and bulk limits and defeating the point of zoning.
  2. Density bonuses should be tied to clear, objective height rules — for example a percentage above the zoned height or an absolute cap like double the allowed height — so bonuses increase homes without obliterating predictable zoning.
  3. Cities do need more housing, but growth should be guided by context: protect iconic waterfronts and steer taller buildings to transit-rich corridors so planning and public shape of the city still matter.

What’s next for New York’s historic preservation movement?

Urben Field Notes • 54 implied HN points • 07 Jan 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Zoning
  1. New York has a strong historic preservation law that protects many buildings, but it can also make it hard to build new homes in desirable areas. This creates a tough balance between keeping history and making space for more people.
  2. Some new development plans, like the SoHo rezoning, try to add more housing while keeping important historic buildings safe, which could help both residents and the city's character.
  3. There are better ways to work with historic buildings so new structures can fit in without getting in the way of preserving important parts of the city's history. It's about finding a middle ground where old and new can coexist.

95% of Bay Area Cities Lost Zoning Authority

The Discourse Lounge • 257 HN points • 14 Feb 23
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Zoning
  1. 95% of Bay Area Cities lost zoning authority, allowing for more flexible residential construction rules.
  2. Bay Area cities need to have their housing elements checked on specific deadlines to avoid zoning restrictions being lifted.
  3. The Builder's Remedy eliminates discretionary subjective approval processes, allowing for more streamlined approval based on objective standards.

A Public Comment in Alexandria

Cornerstone • 19 implied HN points • 07 Nov 23
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Zoning
  1. The importance of transit-oriented development in addressing housing needs and housing policy challenges in regions like Alexandria.
  2. Advocacy for zoning reforms and the need to view each other positively and collaboratively in solving the housing crisis.
  3. Engagement in community planning and promoting diverse housing options to create inclusive, thriving neighborhoods.

Housing Is Scarce Because Property Rights Are Weak

Cornerstone • 0 implied HN points • 08 Dec 23
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Zoning
  1. Housing scarcity can be linked to weak property rights, like the Supreme Court decision on zoning.
  2. The Supreme Court decision in 1926 upheld single-family zoning, prioritizing certain privileges for exclusive neighborhoods.
  3. The opinion reflected class prejudice and focused on spurious arguments about traffic, still relevant in housing advocacy today.