A year ago, New York Times Magazine called Harvard economics Professor Edward Glaeser “the most exciting urban researcher in half a century.” Many of Glaeser’s research papers show that land-use regulation, not demand, is the primary cause of unaffordable housing.
This work has made Glaeser something of a hero in the antiplanning movement, and I’ve unsuccessfully tried to persuade him to speak at several of our conferences (although one of his co-authors, Bryce Adam Ward, gave an excellent presentation at the 2006 Preserving the Amercan Dream conference).
So it was with great disappointment that I read his latest paper latest paper, “Do Regional Economies Need Regional Coordination?” He argues that, since local government regulation is driving up housing prices, one solution is a regional government that could give local governments direction or incentives to provide affordable housing. Residents of Portland, Denver, and other cities with strong regional governments will find this bitterly amusing.
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The East Coast was famous for the affordabilty of its post-war housing markets. Housing in the New York and Boston regions did not become unaffordable until the 1980s.