Fall 2015 Issue of Regulation Magazine
In recent decades, policymakers have attempted to overcome zoning constraints on new development by granting special zoning exceptions in return for various developer-provided public benefits. This strategy is proving inadequate as zoning continues to suppress needed development of lower- and middle-class housing and employment. However, broader zoning reform is politically difficult because of incumbent-homeowner political coalitions.
In the new issue of Regulation, law professors Roderick M. Hills Jr. and David Schleicher recommend an unlikely cure for zoning regulations that are strangling our cities: binding, comprehensive, citywide plans. In Can ‘Planning’ Deregulate Land Use? , Hills and Schleicher propose a return to the use of comprehensive, citywide planning for land use regulation, which can only be approved or rejected, without amendment, by legislative bodies.
Also in this issue, Richard A. Booth argues against adopting the European approach to insider trading; Pierre Lemieux illustrates how “public health” as a concept has become divorced from its original, intended meaning; Omri Ben-Shahar and Kyle Logue criticize government-subsidized weather insurance for subsidizing the wealthy and encouraging development in disaster-prone areas; and Joseph Michael Newhard shows how domestic firearms manufacturing has actually benefitted from gun control policies.
