So Why Is The Rent Too Damn High?

Planning has always struck me as a politically liberal profession because it favors government intervention to order the built environment, particularly when it comes to patterns of urban development, so I have a keen interest in conservative viewpoints within the profession. In the Wall Street Journal two weeks ago, Wendell Cox, a former member of the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, published an op-ed column arguing that California's strong legislative favoritism for multifamily housing is increasing housing's cost and compelling people and businesses to leave. "California has declared war on the most popular housing choice, the single family, detached home -- all in the name of saving the planet," he writes, but local governments' implementation of "intense land-use regulations," such as development moratoria, growth boundaries and impact fees have sent prices very far upward.

Well, Cox is probably right: In theory, an urban growth boundary makes land more expensive because there's less of it in supply. A moratorium on development, a more burdensome approval or regulatory process for new development, or a larger impact fee has the same effect for similar reasons. Urban growth boundaries are very good environmental policy because they limit development on previously unspoiled land, protecting natural habits; and they reduce vehicle emissions because the greater density pushes housing closer to jobs and encourages greater use of public transit. But no policy is wholly excellent and an uncomfortable effect of the boundary is its influence on land prices.

But then, the cost of housing in California probably isn't so easily explained by the state's preference for denser development. Expensive housing is partly a factor of higher incomes and California, whose economy has large concentrations in high-tech, finance and entertainment, has lots of people who are able to bid up the price of attractive housing. Housing also becomes more expensive when it's in a desirable place. Even if housing is more expensive in Los Angeles than in Jacksonville, many still choose the former because of its quality of life, which is partly better because of the environmental regulations that preserve the state's coastline, for example. Alternatively, the rush to remove limits on development becomes more complicated when one considers that the places with the most permissive approaches to new development during the early 21st century (particularly of the single-family type that Cox prefers), such as Las Vegas, Phoenix, Central Florida and Stockton, Calif., have found themselves with empty subdivisions, unhealthily depressed housing prices and metro economies that are among the country's worst.

As much as I liked Cox's column for its provocation, his concluding paragraph simply misses the boat: "Ali Modarres of the Edmund G. 'Pat' Brown Institute of Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles has shown that a disproportionate share of migrating households are young. This is at least in part because it is better to raise children with backyards than on condominium balconies. A less affordable California, with less attractive housing, could disadvantage the state as much as its already destructive policies toward business." This is pure social construct posing as fact. That cities declined during one generation of American history isn't proof that they're dead. That one generation of federal policy favored the suburb isn't proof that this wave of policy was the most successful ever. The city isn't inherently more harmful to children than the suburb and multifamily housing isn't inherently uglier or less practical than the standalone house. Neighborhood composition and design go a long way to determining that. However, Cox's opinion is the prevailing one, at least everywhere but in some urban settings, which is a momentous challenge for planners, designers and developers.

Update: Peter Calthorpe, one of the country's more-renowned urban designers and a founder of New Urbanism, takes down Cox's column here.