You may have noticed that I haven’t posted a new entry in a while – I’ve been recovering from a long European trip, trying to get things back in order at home and overcome JET LAG!!  I keep waking up at 4:00 am, I should just write new blog posts then, but my mind isn’t working properly at that time of day.  Ah, well.  Finally, I’m feeling up to it!

Saw this piece in The Atlantic this morning:  Cancel Zoning: If we want to fix the housing-affordability crisis, segregation, and sprawl, zoning must go.  It’s by M. Nolan Gray, who is described as a professional city planner and an expert in urban land-use regulation. He is currently completing a Ph.D. in urban planning at UCLA. Gray previously worked on the front lines of zoning as a planner in New York City, and now serves as an Affiliated Scholar with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, where he advises state and local policymakers on land-use policy.  The piece in The Atlantic is excerpted from his newly published book, Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It.

My point in bringing this to your notice is the growing pervasiveness of ”zoning reform” as a social and cultural icon.  If you scroll back through this blog, you will see the many entries I’ve made about the push for zoning reform – that is, the movement to eliminate exclusive single-family zoning, and other restrictive land use regulations for housing – around the country.  We’ve been speculating on the inevitability of the movement reaching Utah.  It has, in fact, been discussed at state legislative levels, but so far, the strong efforts by local officials to work with state ones has led to a more collaborative approach.  Can it continue?

When books like this, and stories about them pop up in such respected national publications as The Atlantic, (and The Economist, and the New York Times, and on and on), well, the push may well become irresistible.  Some notable excerpts:

Amid ongoing crises of housing affordability, inequality, segregation, and sprawl, fixing zoning has emerged as a cause célèbre. Over the past decade, the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations have all vowed to take on zoning reform. National outlets now regularly decry the evils of zoning. And local YIMBY groups across the country are rewriting old ordinances. For the first time in 100 years, the arbitrary lines that divide up the American city have become impossible for the average person to ignore.

New homes aren’t going unbuilt because of developers’ ignorance or a lack of land—developers are desperate to build in expensive cities, and they can always build up when they can’t build out. Instead, homes are going unbuilt because of zoning.

For every zoning rule prohibiting new housing, a half-dozen rules inflate the prices of the housing that actually gets built.

Consider minimum lot sizes, which require developers to set aside a certain amount of land for each home. These rules are common in single-family zoning districts, where lot size is a key driver of costs. Although they serve a health-and-safety function in rural areas—where, for example, sewer hookups may be unavailable—these rules serve no such purpose in most cities and suburbs. Ample research has shown that minimum lot sizes are a major culprit for rising housing costs.

…this suggests a bleak future for zoning. The most powerful voices in local housing debates are those of incumbent homeowners. If they see zoning regulations as a means to inflate their biggest investment—the value of their home—the prospects for reform are slim. Even when local policy makers manage to change codes, they will face continual opposition. Their victories are unlikely to last.

As I wrote once before, the wave, she is coming.  Can it be resisted?  Should it be?