The latest to question the urban-planning mantra that densification makes housing more affordable is none other than Richard Florida, who is famous for telling cities they need to attract the creative class. In an article in CityLab, Florida cites new research by MIT planner Yonah Freemark that finds that rezoning neighborhoods for denser housing may actually make housing less affordable.
Antiplanner readers know of the debate between so-called YIMBYs who want to make housing more affordable by “building up” and those who want to “build out,” i.e., build low-density housing on the fringes of existing urban areas. The YIMBYs claim that residents of single-family neighborhoods who resist densification are racists and are keeping housing unaffordable. The Antiplanner responds that dense housing is more expensive and therefore can’t make housing more affordable.
Freemark’s analysis of upzoning in Chicago finds that it leads developers to replace low-cost existing housing with luxury multifamily housing. The result is increased prices. While the laws of supply and demand suggest that an increasing supply of housing would make housing more affordable in the long run, Freemark found that upzoning did not lead to an increase in the number of housing units built; it just influenced where they were built. Continue reading
