Monday, May 22, 2006
The High Cost of Land-Use Planning
The San Francisco Chronicle published an intelligent, thoughtful op ed on the effects of planning on housing prices. I would say more good things about this op ed but it would sound immodest because I wrote it.
Meanwhile, a reporter for the Boulder Daily Camera had an article on the same subject yesterday that also quotes me. Boulder is famous for limiting building permits and buying up all the land around it as open space, something known as the "Danish plan" after Paul Danish, the former city commissioner who promoted the plan back in the 1970s.
Danish is also quoted in the article claiming that Boulder's high housing prices are due solely to its livability, not to any government restrictions on housing supply. Any place with lower prices, he says, must be "a really awful place to live." Since that takes in most of the United States, I guess this just confirms the oft-stated motto that Boulder is "25 square miles surrounded by reality."
Meanwhile, a reporter for the Boulder Daily Camera had an article on the same subject yesterday that also quotes me. Boulder is famous for limiting building permits and buying up all the land around it as open space, something known as the "Danish plan" after Paul Danish, the former city commissioner who promoted the plan back in the 1970s.
Danish is also quoted in the article claiming that Boulder's high housing prices are due solely to its livability, not to any government restrictions on housing supply. Any place with lower prices, he says, must be "a really awful place to live." Since that takes in most of the United States, I guess this just confirms the oft-stated motto that Boulder is "25 square miles surrounded by reality."
Comments:
As a resident of the Bay Area, I must applaud Mr. O'Toole's forthright and intelligent op ed. Too bad (virtually) nobody will listen to it around here.
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