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Monthly Archives: February 2008

Land-Use Regulation Makes Housing Expensive

By | | Regional planning
35 Comments

Land-use regulation has added $200,000 to the median price of Seattle homes, says Theo Eicher, an economist at the University of Washington. This is a little greater than the amount estimated by the Antiplanner, which was $180,000, but since the Antiplanner was being deliberately conservative, the numbers are remarkably close.

As described here, Eicher’s study relied on a recently released database of land-use regulation in 2,730 U.S. cities that was compiled by Joseph Gyourko of the Wharton Business School. Eicher compared housing prices from 2006 census data with regulation and showed there is a strong correlation between the two. Eicher was only able to look at 250 cities, because census data were not collected in all cities in the Wharton database. When the 2010 census is complete, an even more detailed study should be possible.

Originally built in the 1920s for $2,800 (without the second story, which was added later), this house recently sold for $650,000. According to economist Theo Eicher, more than $200,000 of that price is due to land-use regulation.
Flickr photo by brewbooks.

Eicher’s actual paper includes data for all 250 cities, 123 of which overlap with the Antiplanner’s data. His estimates of the costs of regulation tend to be a little higher than mine except in California, Florida, and a few other places where they are lower.

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Mustang Kicks Air Travelers

By | | Planning Disasters
12 Comments

The Denver International Airport (DIA), one of the 20th century’s great planning disasters, has been cursed with an angry blue mustang that threatens to stomp anyone who says anything bad about the airport. Built at a cost of $4.8 billion — $2 billion more than originally projected, the Denver airport is 25 miles from downtown Denver — or, as the locals say, halfway to Kansas.

Halfway to Kansas.
Flickr photo by thomas23.

DIA was such a bad idea that even the planners objected. I once found a document prepared by the Denver Regional Council of Governments predicting that the airport would be way to expensive, and to pay for it they would have to raise gate fees, which would cause Denver to lose one of its hub airlines. That is exactly what happened: rather than participate in this boondoggle, Continental moved its hub to Houston.

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Disenchanted with Conservation Easements

By | | News commentary
6 Comments

The Antiplanner used to think that conservation easements were a great idea. Only 30 percent of the nation’s land is public, and easements provided a way to protect some of the remaining 70 percent from development.

But lately I’ve come to have my doubts. To get tax credits for easements, they have to be perpetual. And who are we to try to decide the fate of land for future generations? Just as it might be unwise to wantonly destroy something that people in the future might value, it could be similarly inappropriate to lock it up and throw away the key.

Is Colorado running out of open space?
Flickr photo by Gord McKenna.

In recent days, the Rocky Mountain News has documented some other abuses of the easement process:

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Here’s What’s Wrong with Bush & the Neocons

By | | News commentary, Planning Disasters
21 Comments

The Antiplanner is not too excited about the presidential primaries, which seem to be little more than a reality show for political activists. It certainly has kept them chattering about who will get thrown off the island for over a year. But it has also not only kept them from noticing how bad our government really is, they haven’t even noticed that nearly all the people running are the ones who were responsible for making it so bad.

Instead, we imprint our own images of how we think things ought to be on a candidate and then imagine how wonderful life would be if only our candidate were to get elected. If our candidate should happen to get elected, there will be plenty of scapegoats to blame things on when we fail to achieve nirvana. All of this has become greatly exaggerated now that election campaigns are lasting two full years.

Some may call me cynical, but as Lily Tomlin says, no matter how cynical you are, you can’t keep up.

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Congestion Is Our Friend?

By | | News commentary, Regional planning, Transportation
31 Comments

Few planners are as outspoken about the need for urban congestion as Dom Nozzi, a senior planner in Gainesville, Florida. In Saturday’s Gainesville Sun, he writes about all the wonderful benefits congestion can produce:

1. A disincentive for sprawl
2. A reduction in pollution
3. A reduction in average car speeds
4. A healthier urban core
5. Political pressure for more transit and bike paths
6. Infill, mixed use, and higher density residential

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Make Mortgage Relief Conditional on Land-Use Reform

By | | News commentary
15 Comments

President Bush’s 2009 budget includes a proposal to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on programs aimed at helping people avoid foreclosure on their homes. Although the programs are small and won’t help many of the people who are in trouble, any help at all sends the wrong signal: that you can borrow beyond your means and the feds will bail you out when you get in trouble.

But, as the Antiplanner has noted before, the real reason why many people bought houses that were more expensive than they could afford was that state and local land-use rules had driven up housing prices. So Heritage Foundation scholar Ron Utt has an idea: make mortgage relief conditional on deregulation of land use.

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Audit of Salt Lake City Transit

By | | News commentary, Transportation
8 Comments

The Auditor General of the Utah legislature has released a report critical of the Utah Transit Authority, which runs light rail and buses and is building commuter rail in the Salt Lake City-Ogden area. Many of the criticisms will be familiar to Antiplanner readers:

  • UTA has systematically overestimated light-rail ridership by about 20 percent (i)
  • Bus ridership is so low that the service is less efficient than other transit agencies (i)
  • While light rail may emit less air pollution than cars, the buses “create so much air pollution that they negate any gains in air quality created by light rail.” (ii)

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Typically empty UTA bus.
Flickr photo by Theorris.

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You Have a Right to Be Forced to Buy Health Insurance

By | | News commentary
24 Comments

Monday, the eminent left-wing economist, Paul Krugman, suggested that Hillary Clinton’s health-care plan was better than Barack Obama’s because Clinton’s would come closer to insuring everyone “at only slightly higher cost.” Of course, Krugman never questioned whether the left-wing goal of universal health insurance makes sense in the first place.

I remember a couple of decades ago seeing a demonstration in Washington with signs saying, “health care is a right, not a privilege.” At the time, it seemed like a very peculiar thing to say. All the other rights we are used to — freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc. — are designed to protect people from the government. They are promises that the government won’t interfere in certain aspects of our lives.

To say that health care is a right is just the opposite: it is a promise that the government will interfere in our lives, by taking our money and giving it to people who need health care.

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A Commuter Train for Milwaukee?

By | | Transportation
9 Comments

Normally, the Antiplanner does not like to use names like “liars” and “cheaters,” preferring to let the facts speak for themselves. But, time and again, these words turn out to perfectly apply to the people who put together rail transit projects.

Take, for example, the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Transit Authority, or RTA for short, which covers Kenosha, Racine, and Milwaukee counties. Created in 2005, RTA wants to run a commuter-rail line it calls the KRM, from Kenosha through Racine to Milwaukee. The line would meet an existing commuter-rail line that goes from Kenosha to Chicago, and at least one train a day would run through to and from Chicago to Milwaukee.

According to RTA’s latest newsletter, the KRM would cost about $200 million to start up and would require a $6.3 million annual operating subsidy. For that it would carry about 1.7 million trips per year, which translates to 6,700 per weekday.

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The Tata Nano

By | | Transportation
8 Comments

An Indian auto manufacturer plans to sell a two-cylinder, 5-passenger automobile for just $2,500. Some predict that the Tata Nano will become the Model T of the developing world.

Flickr photo by bbjee.

Of course, some government officials worry that selling affordable cars to Indians will cause too much congestion and parking problems. Only the government would think like that. Imagine how ABC, CBS, and NBC would react if someone found a way to make televisions more affordable: “O woe is us! More affordable TVs will just make the demand for quality television higher.”

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