planning

The Future of Cities: View from the Left Coast

New Geography — Tue, 13 Dec 2022 17:04:17 -0500

Save the date! Join us live for a Speaker Panel on Friday January 20,2023 from 11:30AM - 2:30PM PST.

The Western US has long been an innovator in developing the urban form, yet now that form is showing strain and there's a fierce debate about how western cities should grow.

The speaker panel will explore these issues, from homelessness to high housing prices and the impact of regulation.

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Chapman University

The New California Land Use (CEQA) Reforms

Wendell Cox — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 16:19:52 -0400

For more than half a century, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) has been used to block new residential (and other) projects. There is considerable evidence that CEQA has been a major contributor to California’s housing price crisis. According to The Wall Street Journal, “has been used by opponents to block almost any kind of development project.”

Over most of the last decade, a number of legislative reforms have been enacted to address the severe unaffordability and constrained housing supply in the state. Yet, from 2019 to 2024, building permits have dropped by nearly 10%, according to Census Bureau data.

Last week, Governor Gavin Newsom set passage of CEQA housing reforms as a condition of signing the state’s budget act. The principal reforms exempt some housing projects from CEQA.

To be exempt from CEQA challenges, a housing project must be infill and within a Census Bureau urban area (see Los Angeles Densest Large Urban Area). This means that Greenfield development, often the target of CEQA suits, could not be exempt.

Projects up to 20 acres can be exempted. The buildings must be 85 feet tall or less. This is approximately eight stories. Minimum housing unit densities would need to be from 5 to 15 housing units per acre. In metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles (and other metropolitan areas with more than 2,000,000 residents), the minimum housing densities would be 15 units per acre in cities with more than 25,000 residents. This high residential density means that the reform is likely to result in virtually no single family permits (a type of development despised by the planning orthodoxy but preferred by more households).

Generally, the minimum densities are higher than the already developed areas. As a result, the CEQA reforms are less an affordability program and more a densification program. It is worth noting that California already has the highest urban population densities in the nation, according to the latest Census Bureau data (2020), at 4,789 per square mile. The latest Census Bureau data shows California to have the three densest larger urban areas in the nation (Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Jose). New York is fourth densest, with its sprawling suburbs weighing down its urban density).

Some analysts expect that the CEQA reforms will produce substantial new housing construction. This mirrors expectations expressed for the previously enacted reforms, which have had little effect. Part of the problem is that analysts portray the California housing debacle as a supply problem. But it is much more an affordability problem.

The problem is the extent to which California land markets have been distorted through strategies like urban growth boundaries and state planning requirements, such as the Sustainable Communities provisions of Senate Bill 375 (2008). These kinds of regulations have been shown to materially escalate land prices throughout the urban area. New York Times journalist Conor Dougherty recently suggested that Greenfield development will be required “to fix the housing crisis.” I would not be surprised if Governor Newsom’s next wave of reform produces little more than those that preceded it.

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a Senior Fellow with Unleash Prosperity in Washington and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (1977-1985), which was a predecessor agency to the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro). Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council, to complete the unexpired term of New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (1999-2002). He is author of War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life and Toward More Prosperous Cities: A Framing Essay on Urban Areas, Transport, Planning and the Dimensions of Sustainability.

Why New Land Development and General Aviation Engine Design Are Stagnant

Rick Harrison — Wed, 21 May 2025 12:44:42 -0400

This 3 minute presentation explains why both aircraft engine design and subdivision design remain stagnant.

Rick Harrison is President of Rick Harrison Site Design Studio and Neighborhood Innovations. Rick has been instrumental in advancing land planning techniques as well as technology for almost all professions tied to land development.

Hand in Hand: Urban Planners and Some Libertarians

Wendell Cox — Mon, 14 Oct 2024 12:25:34 -0400

On October 10, The Wall Street Journal published a review of “Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World” by Sara Bronin of Cornell University. The author of the review was Professor Edward Glaeser of Harvard University, surely one of the top housing economists.

I took issue with one of Prof. Glaeser’s points, and commented as follows (in the “Conversations” section following the article.

Prof. Glaeser is right in saying “When it comes to land controls, I’m pretty confident that the public sector has made the bigger blunders. However, I disagree with his characterization of the sides as "libertarian" and "interventionist." It is not a two-way continuum. On peripheral development, which is crucial both to a well functioning housing market and housing affordability, too many libertarians are with the interventionists in opposing organic development on and beyond the urban fringe. This urban containment and compact city philosophy is at the heart of much of what has become impossibly unaffordable housing that characterizes metropolitan housing markets from Vancouver to Toronto, Coastal California, Australia, London, and too much of Europe. Tragically, urban containment is an existential threat to the middle-class.

I have routinely dealt with these issues in the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability editions (published since 2005).

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (1977-1985) and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council, to complete the unexpired term of New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (1999-2002). He is author of War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life and Toward More Prosperous Cities: A Framing Essay on Urban Areas, Transport, Planning and the Dimensions of Sustainability.

The Next Australian City: the Suburban Evolution

Guy Gibson and Ross Elliott — Fri, 14 Jun 2024 12:01:10 -0400

Australia, much like America, is a nation of suburbs. The overwhelming majority of its people live, work and play in the suburbs of Australian cities. And while Australia is one of the most urbanised nations in the world, with two thirds of them living in their capital cities – and principally Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane at that – it is the suburbs of those cities that remain the preferred place to live.

The evolution of Australian cities and suburbs is a theme explored in this book by Suburban Futures, edited by Guy Gibson and Ross Elliott. It features 30 authors and includes international perspectives by Joel Kotkin, Wendell Cox, Peter Gordon, Alan Berger and June Williamson and Ellen Dunham-Jones. The Canadian experience is told by Antony Lorius and Laura Taylor. Every Australian state and territory is also covered, each by a different author – all experts in their field but all with different perspectives on the history and future of suburban development.

North American readers will find much that is familiar and much that is new in this book. The editors have sought to provide a fresh sense of legitimacy for the suburban story of Australia which – much like in North America – is frequently the subject of disdain and derision. “The suburbs are about boredom, and obviously some people like being bored and plain and predictable, I'm happy for them … even if their suburbs are destroying the world,” was an infamous comment by noted Australian urbanist Elizabeth Farrelly. That’s not a view shared by authors in this work, who nonetheless are unafraid to tackle valid concerns around connectivity, mobility, equity and amenity.

The Next Australian City is for this reason both enlightening about the Australian experience, and challenging in terms of how its cities and suburbs will be shaped by global and local forces into the future.

Available at Amazon.

No Parking Downtown Austin Apartment Building Foreclosure due to Insufficient Demand

Wendell Cox — Thu, 12 Oct 2023 19:58:45 -0400

According to Urbanize Austin:

“An apartment complex marketed to middle-income downtown workers, especially those interested in reducing or eliminating their personal vehicle use, has been repossessed. Capitol Quarters was returned to its lender due to a low occupancy rate that made it unsustainable, developer Weaver Buildings announced this week. The property at 1108 Nueces Street underwent a deed-in-lieu transfer to North Carolina's Churchill Real Estate Holdings.”

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a founding senior fellow at the Urban Reform Institute, Houston, a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Make Housing Affordable by Abolishing Growth Boundaries, not Ending Density Restrictions: Reason Magazine Debate

Wendell Cox — Fri, 26 May 2023 17:44:14 -0400

In too many metropolitan areas, housing is no longer affordable for middle-class households, especially in markets subject to "urban containment," now the world's dominant planning regime. According to planning experts Arthur C. Nelson and Casey Dawkins, urban containment draws "a line around an urban area"; it includes urban growth boundaries and greenbelts. It is "explicitly designed to limit the development of land outside a defined urban area, while encouraging" infill, to limit or block organic urban expansion.

Urban containment is intended to increase urban land costs. Shifting demand inside the contained area produces an abrupt increase in land values at the boundary, distorting the land value gradient. As Nelson and Dawkins say, "This shift should decrease the value of land outside the boundary and increase the value of land inside the boundary"(emphasis added), which effectively sets a higher "floor value" for urban land. This is the "urban containment effect."

Read the full discussion at: the May issue of Reason.

Wendell Cox (Demographia): Affirmative
Christian Britschgi (Reason magazine): Negative

The Future of Cities - AEI Event

New Geography — Thu, 20 Oct 2022 12:48:28 -0400

On October 18, AEI’s Ryan Streeter discussed the changing global urban demographics with a panel of contributors to the forthcoming volume The Future of Cities (AEI, 2023). The panel began by addressing the need for a new perspective on cities, particularly after cities recover from the pandemic.

Watch the video

Learn more about this event at AEI

Court Blocks Minneapolis Single-Family Zoning Abolition

Wendell Cox — Thu, 16 Jun 2022 18:57:20 -0400

The City of Minneapolis “cannot enforce its controversial long-range plan eliminating single-family zoning, but it could do so in the future if it meets certain conditions, a Hennepin County district judge ruled Wednesday in a lawsuit brought by a trio of environmental organizations.” According to Susan Du and Liz Navratil of the Star Tribune, Smart Growth Minneapolis, the Audubon Society of Minneapolis and Minnesota Citizens for the Protection of Migratory Birds “sued to force the city to conduct an environmental review, alleging that ‘that a plan allowing the increase in density would likely pollute natural resources because of the increase in hard surfaces, soil erosion and increased runoff, among other adverse effects.’”

Hennepin County District Judge Joseph Klein issued a summary judgment writing that: "The City has not put forth any evidence showing that a full build-out will not have any of the potential adverse environmental impacts."

Judge Klein “criticized the city's defense for ‘vaguely’ dismissing the risks that the plan presents to the environment by arguing "a full build-out of almost 150,000 new residential units is extremely unlikely to occur," The Star-Tribune noted that despite the City’s “extremely unlikely” argument, the 150,000 units could be permitted throughout its duration.

Demographic Note: Like most central cities that have not annexed or consolidated with other jurisdictions, the city of Minneapolis has suffered significant population loss. The city of Minneapolis population peaked at 522,000 in 1950, dropping to 368,000 in 1990 and recovering to 430,000 in 2020. The 92,000 city population loss over the period contrasts with the growth of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, from 1,330,000 in 1950 to 3,690,000 in 2020 (present geographical definition), an increase of 2,360,000, or 177%. All of the metropolitan area’s growth has been outside the city of Minneapolis since 1950. The metropolitan area (labor market area) now covers 15 counties, 13 in Minnesota and 2 in Wisconsin.

Feudal Future Podcast: The World After COVID

Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky — Mon, 18 Oct 2021 17:16:24 -0400

It’s a new world for sure, but for better or worse — or simply different? What kind of world is being created, and how will it affect developing countries, big cities, suburbs and smaller towns around the world?

On this episode of Feudal Future Marshall Toplansky moderates a discussion of the global future with Richard Florida, Joel Kotkin, Bheki Mahlobo, Li Sun, and Laure Mandeville.

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More podcast episodes & show notes at JoelKotkin.com

Watch Episode Video

About our episode speakers:

Richard Florida is one of the world’s leading urbanists. He is a researcher and professor, serving as University Professor at the University of Toronto’s School of Cities and Rotman School of Management, and a Faculty Chair at NYU’s Schack School of Real Estate. He is a writer and journalist, having penned several global bestsellers, including the award-winning The Rise of the Creative Class and his most recent book, The New Urban Crisis. He is co-founder of CityLab, the leading publication devoted to cities and urbanism. He is an entrepreneur, as the founder of the Creative Class Group which works closely with companies and governments worldwide.

Laure Mandeville is a Senior Reporter at the French newspaper le Figaro, where she covers American and European Affairs as well as intellectual debates around the world. She joined the foreign desk of Le Figaro in 1989 to cover the end of communism and spent twenty years covering the post- Soviet world. She was the Russia bureau chief in Moscow from 1997 to 2000 and then US bureau chief in Washington from December 2008 to August 2016. She also covered Islam in Europe from 2000 to 2008. She is the co-founder of the Tocqueville Conversations, an annual Conference on the Future of our democracies and a member of the Board of the Tocqueville Foundation. Laure Mandeville holds a BA in Slavic languages from the University of Toulouse and graduated from L’Institut d’Etudes politiques de Paris, in International affairs. She also holds a postgraduate degree in Political Science from Science Po and was visiting scholar at Harvard University, as a Fulbright and Arthur Sachs fellow.

She is the author of “Who is Donald Trump” (2016, Les Equateurs/Le Figaro), “The Russian Reconquest” (Grasset, 2008), and “The Russian Army: A Power in Tatters” (1994, Ed n°01). She contributes to Politique Internationale and The American Purpose. She is a regular guest on the TV Show C’est Dans L’air, LCI, and France 24.

Dr. Li Sun is a lecturer in Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds. Prior to the UK, she worked in universities in Germany, the Netherlands, the US, and China. Besides academic positions, Dr. Sun also serves as a consultant to the UN, World Bank, and OECD, as well as various government offices in the UK, the Netherlands, and China. Her main research interest is urbanization and governance in China including rural-urban migration, social policies, land, and housing issue. Her publications appear in leading journals of relevant fields such as Cities, Social Policy & Administration, Land Use Policy. Her book entitled Rural Urban Migration and Policy Intervention in China was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2019.

Bheki Mahlobo is an analyst and economic researcher at the center for risk Analysis (CRA), Johannesburg. He is primarily involved in writing chapters for the Socio-Economic Survey of South Africa, an annual publication that provides information and data on major trends in various social and economic fields. The Centre For Risk Analysis (CRA) is one of the top think tanks in South Africa that provides analysis and advice on scenario planning and macro-economic strategic advice on South African risks, as well as global trends for corporate and individual clients.

Joel Kotkin is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in Orange, California and Executive Director of the Houston-based Urban Reform Institute. He is Senior Advisor to the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute. He is Executive Editor of the widely read website www.newgeography.com and a regular contributor to the City Journal, Daily Beast, Quillette, American Affairs and Real Clear Politics. Kotkin’s most recent book is The Coming of Neo-Feudalism.

Learn more about Marshall Toplansky.
Learn more about Joel Kotkin.

Join the Beyond Feudalism Facebook group.
Read the Beyond Feudalism report.

This show is presented by the Chapman Center for Demographics and Policy, which focuses on research and analysis of global, national and regional demographic trends and explores policies that might produce favorable demographic results over time.