The History of Zoning & How It Exacerbates the Housing Crisis

An April 2023 newsletter by Peter Coy of the NY Times reviews Robert Ellickson's 2022 book "America's Frozen Neighborhoods: The Abuse of Zoning" which Coy calls "a valuable contribution to the growing movement against NIMBYism." NIMBYism is a favorite target of many New Urbanists who are pro-city, pro-density, and anti-single-family zoning. Coy says that today's housing crunch started a century ago under the Hoover administration. President Herbert Hoover thought that in asking municipalities to create local zoning, they would encourage what he thought would be ideal communities - safe, affordable housing for workers, good access to roads and good businesses nearby. But municipalities had different ideas of what they wanted in their communities: namely suburban single-family homes: to bring in more property tax revenues and keep poor people out.Coy highlights some of the key points of Ellickson's book, which analyzes zoning regs in Austin, New Haven, and Silicon Valley to show how their zoning laws have impacted each community. The conclusion of the book, per Coy and per Paul Krugman, also of the NY Times, is that bigger cities are better (more economically productive) and thus more density is a desirable outcome.