Speaking of housing (as the Antiplanner was doing yesterday), San Jose State University economist Edward Stringham gave a great lecture at the Preserving the American Dream conference in San Jose a couple of weeks ago. Dr. Stringham’s presentation (3.7MB PowerPoint file) focused on inclusionary zoning, which is the traditional urban planning solution to high housing prices.

Keep in mind that urban planning is usually the reason why prices are high in the first place (though there are a few exceptions, such as Las Vegas, where land shortages are the result of the government owning most of the land in Nevada). But the planners try to deflect the blame to greedy developers. Their solution is to require those developers to sell or rent a fixed share — usually 15 percent — of new homes at below-market prices to low- or moderate-income families.

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Homeowners do a better job of maintaining their homes, are more likely to vote and participate in civic life, and work harder to improve their neighborhoods, admits Clive Crook in the current issue of The Atlantic Monthly. But he still believes that homeownership is “bad for America.”

Homeownership: Good or bad for America?

What is his case against homeownership? He really has just two points. First, a study in Britain “found that homeownership makes workers less mobile, which brakes economic growth and worsens unemployment.” What Crook doesn’t say is that British housing has that problem because anti-sprawl planners made housing so unaffordable that no one who already owns a home can afford to move.

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“Public policy that reinforces autarky only makes matters worse,” economist William Bogart told the Preserving the American Dream conference. Which, naturally, provoked the question, “What is autarky?”

The answer is that autarky means self-sufficiency, as in an economy that does not participate in international trade. So what did Dr. Bogart mean by this statement in his presentation (which can also be found on p. 182 of his book, Don’t Call It Sprawl, which the Antiplanner reviewed here last July)?

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In addition to talking about sprawl and urban-growth boundaries, Owen McShane raised a few other issues at the Preserving the American Dream conference: namely, the role sustainability and climate change play in the anti-sprawl movement.

The most sustainable city?

Many planning advocates take it for granted that sprawl and auto driving are inherently unsustainable. McShane shows just how this attitude can go when he describes Halle Neustadt, which some Swedish urban planners once described as “the most sustainable city in the world.”

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Smart growth isn’t the solution to sprawl, says Owen McShane of the Centre for Resource Management Studies; it is merely just one more form of “carpet sprawl,” i.e., “urban expansion across the countryside in an endlessly and seamless repeated pattern.” McShane thinks that ordinary sprawl can be better because it creates a more diverse landscape.

Which has more biodiversity: this . . .

At the Preserving the American Dream conference, Owen extolled the virtues of low-density exurban development, which in the U.S. is often called “rural residential.” The area in which Owen lives, north of Auckland, is made up of 5 to 10 acre lots. Since the climate is similar to that of southern California, many of the residents grow olives and other Mediterranean crops.

. . . this . . .

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