How modern zoning affects land value and incentivizes sprawl
urbankchoze.blogspot.com
urbankchoze.blogspot.com
I worry the methodology in this post is a little fast and loose though.
For example, as we move to CASE 2, its stipulated that a supply constraint artificially inflates prices of MFH and an oversupply artificially decreases prices of SFH. That really depends on the sizes of the zones, it could easily be flipped in some situations (maybe even as a tool to protect land values for SFH or large homes...).
Would really be nice to see a blog on zoning economics with more citations to academic journals, just as another check on the conclusions, or a path to deeper study.
The point seems to mostly be to make a little simple toy model which can be used to explore some of the possible outcomes, and show some which might not be obvious a priori. But it would be nice if he tried modifying the model in various ways (e.g. in amount of land devoted to various zones, etc.) and showing the results.
Or alternately, it would be nice to compare more comprehensively to concrete real-world outcomes.
When this little experiment is seen in the context of the rest of the blog, which has lots of analysis of specific neighborhoods around the world, it’s a bit better balanced.