While the broad impact of zoning and other land use regulations on housing supply and affordability is well studied, much remains to be understood about how regulations affect different segments of the housing market, and whether and when policies that reduce such barriers result in improvements to supply, affordability, and neighborhood access. The articles in this issue look at trends in land use and zoning regulations and their impacts on different housing types, the context that informed their creation, and policies aimed at removing barriers to development and increasing neighborhood access. The issue concludes with a forum focused on the potential impacts of mass rezoning, and the way it should be structured, highlighting both the complexity of the debate on this topic, and the importance of national and local context as we debate these topics.
In the first article, Kuhlmann and Rodnyansky document trends in the production of “small missing middle housing,” which they define as multifamily housing with two to four units. The authors show the decline of this stock in the U.S. over time and explore the association of that decline with different community characteristics, including zoning rules. Next, LaBriola analyzes the adoption of residential growth controls in California cities between 1970 and 1992 and explores whether environmental concerns about population growth, fiscal factors, or a desire to exclude either Black or foreign born households drove these policies.
On the other end of the spectrum there are land use and zoning reforms aimed at increasing housing development and neighborhood access. One such tool is inclusionary zoning, which offers additional density in exchange for greater affordability. In an article focusing on Johannesburg and Cape Town in South Africa, Turok, Rubin, and Scheba identify the components essential for inclusionary zoning policies to be adopted and effective. More comprehensive, and certainly more controversial, than inclusionary zoning is mass upzoning. In the opening paper of a forum on the topic of mass upzoning, Murray and Gordon argue that governments around the world can, and should, retain the value created when such a policy is adopted. In their responses, land use and zoning scholars Dawkins, Kim, Monkkonen, and Etienne challenge these arguments by highlighting the important contextual factors to consider at the national and sub-national levels when studying the merits of mass rezoning and any public goals assigned to such an effort. Finally, in a rejoinder, Murray and Gordon highlight a point on which all the respondents agree: that the value generated by upzoning represents an important opportunity, even if the means of capturing it for the public may be different, and more or less feasible, from place to place.