Housing, urban growth and inequalities: the limits to deregulation and upzoning in reducing economic and spatial inequality

Andrés Rodríguez-Pose and Michael Storper

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Urban economics and branches of mainstream economics – what we call the ‘housing as opportunity’ school of thought – have been arguing that shortages of affordable housing in dense agglomerations represent a fundamental barrier to economic development. Housing shortages are considered to limit migration into thriving cities, curtailing their expansion potential, generating rising social and spatial inequalities and inhibiting national growth. According to this dominant view, relaxing zoning and other planning regulations in the most prosperous cities is crucial to unleash the economic potential of cities and nations and to facilitate within-country migration. In this article, we contend that the bulk of the claims of the housing as opportunity approach are fundamentally flawed and lead to simplistic and misguided policy recommendations. We posit that there is no clear and uncontroversial evidence that housing regulation is a principal source of differences in home availability or prices across cities. Blanket changes in zoning are unlikely to increase domestic migration or to improve affordability for lower-income households in prosperous areas. They would, however, increase gentrification within metropolitan areas and would not appreciably decrease income inequality. In contrast to the housing models, we argue that the basic motors of all these features of the economy are the current geography of employment, wages and skills.

Keywords: cities; housing; regulation; urban planning; economic growth; inequality; migration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 O18 R21 R23 R31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2019-09-17
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Published in Urban Studies, 17, September, 2019, 57(2), pp. 223-248. ISSN: 0042-0980

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/100738/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Housing, urban growth and inequalities: The limits to deregulation and upzoning in reducing economic and spatial inequality (2020)
Working Paper: Housing, urban growth and inequalities: The limits to deregulation and upzoning in reducing economic and spatial inequality (2019)
Working Paper: Housing, urban growth and inequalities: The limits to deregulation and upzoning in reducing economic and spatial inequality (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:100738

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().