Exclusionary Zoning Robs Our Cities of Their Best Qualities

http://www.sightline.org/2016/04/20/how-exclusionary-zoning-robs-our-cities-of-their-best-qualities/

Exclusionary zoning was a defining feature of the 20th Century North American exodus to suburbia, where municipalities commonly imposed zoning that only permitted single-family homes on large lots as a thinly veiled means to keep out poor people and people of color. But over the past two decades, as the demographic tide has shifted back toward cities, an analogous story of exclusion is unfolding. And while policymakers’ intentions may not be as blatantly exclusionary as they often were in the suburbs, the result is the same: regulations that restrict the production of new housing cap the number of people who can live in a desirable urban area, the wealthy outbid the poor for homes, and high prices and economic exclusion ensue.

New analysis by economist Jed Kolko comparing 2000 to 2014 confirms that on average across the United States, newcomers to urban areas fall predominantly on the upper end of the income spectrum: “While well-educated, higher-income young adults have become much more likely to live in dense urban neighborhoods, most demographic groups have been left out of the urban revival.”

In “The New Exclusionary Zoning,” an exhaustive academic review of urban exclusionary zoning published in 2014 in the Stanford Law and Policy Review, Georgetown University Law Center Fellow John Mangin summarizes: “The anti-development orientation of certain cities is turning them into preserves for the wealthy as housing costs increase beyond what lower-income families can afford to pay.”