In 2021, with support from The Pew Charitable Trusts, the NYU Furman Center sought proposals for a series of papers that would study the effects of changes to land use law.
We noted in the call for papers that while recent scholarship has continued to unlock important insights about the relationships between land use regulations, housing production, and the shape of our cities, more work was needed to help cities and states develop a practical toolkit of reforms. This series of papers aimed to understand how specific land use reforms—whether substantive revisions to particular provisions of zoning or building codes or procedural reforms of the land use process—affected outcomes on the ground, especially with respect to residential development.
The result is the excellent contributions below. Scholars across the country replied with a diversity of topics that warranted inclusion under this umbrella. As Prof. Noah Kazis describes in the series’ introduction, the selection we landed on examines changes to the substance of land use law and its procedures. It also includes detailed analysis of regulatory changes that applied in select neighborhoods, citywide, and even at the state level. As well, close attention is paid to the ongoing reform efforts in California, which is the current epicenter of both the housing affordability crisis and efforts to tackle it through land use changes.
We hope this collection serves as a valuable contribution to scholarship on land use, and serves policymakers with fresh analysis of a timely issue under debate in America’s statehouses and city halls.
We are deeply grateful to The Pew Charitable Trusts for their support of this work and to the authors who submitted their papers.
We also thank the amazing Furman Center team for valuable research assistance, in particular, Zi Lin Liang, Hayley Raetz, Jiaqi Dong, Kayla Merriweather, Iris Zhao, Shannon Flores, Ceinna Little, and Alex Roth.
-
Series Introduction
Noah M. Kazis
University of Michigan Law School
-
Does Housing Growth in Washington, DC Reflect Land Use Policy Changes?
Leah Brooks
Trachtenberg School, George Washington University
Jenny Schuetz
Brookings Metro
-
Learning from Land Use Reforms: The Case of Ramapo, New York
Joseph Weil Huennekens
Columbia GSAPP
-
Upzoning with Strings Attached: Evidence from Seattle’s Affordable Housing Mandate
Jacob Krimmel
Federal Reserve Board
Betty Wang
University of Hong Kong
-
Evaluating California’s Accessory Dwelling Unit Reforms: Preliminary Evidence and Lessons for State Governments
Nicholas J. Marantz
UC Irvine, School of Social Ecology
Christopher S. Elmendorf
UC Davis, School of Law
Youjin B. Kim
UC Irvine, School of Social Ecology
-
California’s Strengthened Housing Element Law: Early Evidence on Higher Housing Targets and Rezoning?
Paavo Monkkonen, Michael Manville, Michael Lens, Aaron Barrall, Olivia Arena
University of California, Los Angeles
-
How Can Procedural Reform Support Fair Share Housing Production? Assessing the Effects of California’s Senate Bill 35
Moira O'Neill
UC Berkeley & University of Virginia
Ivy Wang
UC Berkeley, Institute of Urban and Regional Development
-
Here Come the Tall Skinny Houses: Assessing Single-Family in Townhouse Redevelopment in Houston, 2007-2020
Jake Wegmann, Aabiya Noman Baqai, Josh Conrad
University of Texas at Austin