Market Urbanism

Every so often I read tweets complaining that the wrong kind of housing is being built. Some complain that there aren’t enough houses being built, because houses are supposedly more family-friendly. Others complain that there aren’t enough apartments being built, because later marriage rates and longer life spans mean that we have more people living alone. Still others focus ...

One argument for height limits and similar regulations is that high-rise apartment buildings generate more greenhouse gas emissions than low-rise apartment buildings, because the former category of buildings have more “embodied carbon”- that is, they use more energy-intensive building materials.

But a

Every so often I read a claim that the housing crisis is caused not by supply or demand, but by inequality. It occurred to me today that I should dig up information on inequality by metro area.

I discovered pretty quickly that the four most unequal large metros (measured by

Sag Harbor, New York, has more yachts than apartments. To its credit, the local government took steps to allow one local landowner to replace a parking lot with affordable apartments intended for local service workers.

But state law is so stacked against housing that even when a locality is eager to allow new homes, it cannot necessarily do so. Residents of Sag Harb...