Density or Sprawl? How To Solve the Urban Housing Crisis

Land use regulation is making cities unaffordable. In an unfettered market, how would Americans choose to live?

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The mass migration of human beings from the country to the city started with the Industrial Revolution. According to the U.N., 2007 was the tipping point when more of humanity lived in urban than rural areas. And the trend continues: A projected two-thirds of the global population will live in cities by 2050.

In the U.S., cities have become remarkably expensive because housing prices have outpaced wage growth. Developers don't build enough new supply to meet rising demand because a thicket of regulations artificially drive up building costs.

Is the solution more density in the core or more sprawl in the periphery—or both? If governments were to remove the artificial restrictions and incentives that shape the landscape of American cities, how would urban dwellers choose to live?

"There is a huge pent up demand for density and for urban living that simply is not being able to get met because of the restrictive zoning," says urban policy analyst Scott Beyer, founder of The Market Urbanism Report, which promotes market-based solutions to urban planning issues.

Beyer says that urban residents want to live close together in the center city, but that local and state governments are making that difficult with land-use regulations, citing onerous building codes and environmental and public review requirements.

"It really goes down the list of all the different ways that the government controls the pricing and use of land," says Beyer.

Libertarian urban policy analyst Randall O'Toole, who calls himself "the Antiplanner," agrees that many city governments overregulate land use but disagrees with Beyer's claim that more density is the answer to housing affordability.

"Truly affordable housing would be low-density housing built on the urban fringe," says O'Toole. He blames so-called "smart growth" policies meant to increase urban density for discouraging land outside of a city proper from being developed at all—a goal furthered by the passage of then California State Senator Darrell Steinberg's 2008 anti–greenhouse emissions law.

Eight years ago, Southern California's planners adopted a 23-year regional plan to help realize Steinberg's vision.

"The goal that urban planners have had for many years is not to make housing more affordable, but to pack people into higher-density urban areas," says O'Toole. "And that's a goal that I don't think Americans should support." 

Beyer agrees that cities should loosen urban growth boundaries, but he argues that more density, not sprawl, would still be more likely in cities San Francisco, citing high land values as evidence of the pent-up demand.

Beyer also points out that homeowners typically don't pay the full cost required to get roads, electrical lines, and other city infrastructure out to the suburbs.

"And so I kind of view the suburbs as an outcome of social engineering and government planning to a degree. And I look at urban density as the outcome as a more organic market-based outcome," says Beyer.

The density question can only be answered if the government stops interfering with the housing market, allowing consumer preferences to shape the urban landscape.

And that's something O'Toole and Beyer would both like to see.

"The government control of land use and zoning has caused housing to be unaffordable," says Beyer. "And I think that market urbanism is a way to reverse those trends."

Produced by Zach Weissmueller. Camera by Jim Epstein, Andrew Hinton, John Osterhoudt, Justin Monticello, and Weissmueller. Graphics by Lex Villena.

Music: "Phase 2" by Xylo Ziko used under an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike Creative Commons License; "Hallon" by Christian Bjoerklund used under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.

[TV-xvle]

What do we want? MORE HOUSING!!
Where do we want it? NOT HERE!

[suthinanahkist]

A mix of low, medium and high density housing is the solution. All tastes and budgets could then be accommodated easily. Not everyone wants to live in a high rise apartment. Similarly, not everyone is equipped to do the chores required to maintain a farm or other large piece of land. Also, there's people who prefer and can afford to live there communities with resort style amenities. And everything in between.
Thus, no one-size-fits-all solution can possibly exist!

[ingislakur]

living closest to work is the way to go. it saves 1-2 hours per day. Let that sink in!

[리주민]

Japan keeps housing prices down by a myriad of policies, including mixed zoning (height-based zones rather than residential, commerical, etc) and urban exclusive zones. Great mostly private railways and bus lines.

[JETZcorp]

The narrator sounds like a kid mediating an argument between divorced parents.

"Mommy says that suburbs are socialist because of freeways."

"Well you tell 'mommy' that city centers are socialist because of growth boundaries and transit boondoggles!"

Beyer. O'Toole. Get a room. And by room I mean Soho Forum Debate.

[MonteroOnBoxing]

Senator Mitchell: “who will be my new neighbors?“ <-- translation: "I'm a bigot."

[chopinbloc]

Easy answer: the market. Stop trying to "solve" problems and let people do as they please.
But sprawl tends not to breed as much poverty and crime as density does.

[Loathomar]

The old guy is confusing the fact that high density house cost is high in areas with extremely high house cost with the idea that high density house has an underlying higher cost. If the land value is zero, home value because very low. We can see this with mobile home prices, $50K for 1, 000 square feet, but you want to put that mobile home in the down town area of a city, the land will cost $500K or more, so the total cost is $550K. And what is this BS about building homes where land is cheap? If you work in downtown LA and want to have a house where land is cheap, you will be ~50 mile or more away have have 3 hours of driving or more, per day to get to work. Also, if you have two people driving 50 mile each way to work, that will cost you $2, 000 per month in auto costs.

[FamousByFriday]

I’m 42 married w kids in the suburbs. I’d love to live in a walkable community with bicycle lanes and public transportation. This video is so high level it barely touches on anything. The video never discussed why people really move to the suburbs. (Crime? Schools? Cost? Corruption? …). It just seems to assume it’s because we love mowing the grass once a week. I also think it may be misleading to say that Houston doesn’t have any city planning, but I’m not the person to ask about that so l’ll let you research yourself. Also the video never discusses economic implications of constant sprawl nor does it discuss the ecological implications. There are other reasons to do things beyond preference.

[GabiN]

So these politicians prefer to have homeless crisis to protect the aesthetic of single family home neighborhoods? They need to:
1. Build more medium and high density housing
2. Improve mass transit options to provide alternative to driving on roads.

[WeAreHere-]

'Mo centralization, 'mo problems

[aaronanglea]

No one owns property. Stop paying property tax and watch how fast "your" property is taken from you

[banditonehundred]

So the libertarian is okay for groups to restrict construction on their own land

[mayamaeru]

japan allows any type of building anywhere too. much more affordable there. even in tokyo

[lndon]

A five story building next to a 2 story suburban home. That's literally super reasonable lol.

[MoonLiteNite]

@9:19 that one car and then van just screwed up traffic for the rest of the day.
Good job guys!

[anewagora]

What has land use regulation done for my area in Minneapolis/St. Paul? Created an explosion of high-rise, ugly luxury apartments that sit empty for years, some more than a decade.

1. Regulations lead developers to determine the only economically sustainable option is to build a luxury complex, in hopes the higher rent prices will be matched by the extra amenities offered.
2. The supply of these buildings far outpaces the demand, consumes neighborhoods, while the variety of housing across the economic spectrum remains stagnant, not meeting demand.
3. The government determines the property value of a neighborhood is HIGHER once a luxury building is introduced, so raises the taxes for that entire area.
4. The luxury buildings might sit empty but the developers don't close them down, make a deal or go out of business. They let the buildings sit empty for years as an investment they plan to UPSELL later. Why can they even do this? Because the govt decided the buildings increase neighborhood value.

This is a fucking PONZI SCHEME created by the govt. The vast majority of people here despise these buildings. It's also festering class/culture tension and politicization. Antifa-Black Bloc and Marxist-influenced social justice are extremely popular and dominating here. We have groups of squatters acting as political revolutionaries that take over or attempt to take over these empty buildings.

In conclusion, land use regulation has done NOTHING to prevent the issues they claim, in fact is a CAUSE of dysfunctional housing developments, and the govt property valuation has been so damaging it's created a fucking ponzi scheme. Housing bubble 2.0

[Staremperor]

When the guy talks about terrible idea of mix of single family homes and midrises (he said five-story building) should see European cities. WE LIVE THIS "TERRIBLE" IDEA without issues. I'll quote Richard Dawkins here: "It works, bitches"

[robw]

The thing is if people grow out instead of up it doesn't increase the tax base of the city, or in some cases even the county. Cities don't want that. They want the money.

[SupaREX]

Nowhere in the city of LA should be single family zoning. If you want a house, look at the 60 miles of sprawl into the desert and down the coastline ( LA - San Bernardino & LA - San Clemente