Kurt Paulsen

Property Rights: The Neglected Theme of 20th-Century American Planning

Problem: Planning affects individual property rights, which have a special cultural significance in the United States, and it has often protected the interests of affluent and influential groups in the past. Thus, it is not surprising that many Americans perceive planning negatively. Purpose: We provide a perspective on the role of property rights in the history of American planning, arguing for confronting these issues as part of finding a better way forward. Methods: We reviewed primary and secondary historical sources and analyzed key legal cases and legislation. Results and conclusions: Planners should honestly acknowledge the role planning has played in protecting elite property rights and should consider taking three steps toward a more positive future. First, they should tell their own story, rather than leaving this to opponents of planning. Second, they should highlight both the rights and the duties of private property owners and of the larger community. Third, planners should not shy away from stating the impacts their proposals would have on property rights. Takeaway for practice: In order to accurately claim that planning manages property in the public interest, planners must understand and explain how planning proposals benefit and harm property owners. Research support: None.

Geography, policy or market? New evidence on the measurement and causes of sprawl (and infill) in US metropolitan regions

This paper proposes four metrics to measure sprawl in metropolitan regions as marginal changes in land use over time. The metrics (change in urban housing unit density, marginal land consumption per new urban household, housing unit density in newly urbanized areas and percent of new housing units located in previously developed areas) are computed for all 329 metropolitan areas in the continental USA for 1980 and 2000. Regression analysis is used to explain variations in sprawl metrics across metropolitan areas, incorporating variables representing market, geographic and policy factors. Changes in development patterns reflect interactions of market and geographic structures. States with a substantial state role in planning accommodate a higher percentage of new housing units in previously developed areas and with lower marginal land consumption, suggesting that policy can mitigate sprawl development.

The Effects of Growth Management on the Spatial Extent of Urban Development, Revisited

Does growth management result in lower marginal land consumption rates? The literature offers inconclusive and inconsistent results. This paper uses new data covering all U.S. metropolitan areas and multiple time periods to estimate panel models of effects of growth management on the spatial extent of urban development. Dummy variable estimation misleadingly suggests that growth management increases urban area extent. However, fixed-effect estimates across different growth management regimes find that more highly regulated regions and stronger planning states have lower marginal land consumption rates, while regional containment policies, as measured here, do not appear to reduce the size of urban areas. (JEL R14, R52)

Governance capacity in collaborative watershed partnerships: evidence from the Philadelphia region

The aim of this study is to assess and document the influence of collaborative watershed partnership processes on realising outcomes: improvement in social conditions and implementation of restoration projects in the Philadelphia region. Methods include primary document review, a survey of partnership participants and quantitative analysis. This analysis identifies correlations between the quality of the collaborative process and changes in social conditions. In addition, although participants in the partnerships have implemented a range of watershed restoration projects, the influence of the process on implementation is ambiguous. The collaborative processes yield agreements, improve learning and build social capital; yet these alone may be insufficient to overcome barriers to implementation.

Not in My Watershed! Will Increased Federal Supervision Really Bring Better Coordination Between Land Use and Water Planning?

This article challenges the assertion that increased federal leverage would successfully coalesce land and water planning throughout the country. Federalism will have the opposite effect, exacerbating tensions between competing management authorities and increasing the number of disparate policies to which local governments must adhere, as examples illustrate. Alternatively, we argue for enforcement of existing tools and creation of an institutional framework loosely modeled on federal–state–local partnership in transportation metropolitan planning organizations. While land use and water planning merit closer coordination, a more flexible institutional arrangement is preferable to expanded federal authority under the Clean Water Act.

The evolution of suburban relative housing-unit diversity

The diversity of housing-unit supply in suburban areas has been a central concern for planners and policy makers for at least 50 years. Absence of census cross-tabulation data on housing unit structure-type by unit-size (number of bedrooms), has limited our understanding of the historical and regional evolution of relative suburban housing-unit diversity. I use census microdata to estimate measures of relative housing diversity between cities and suburbs, including the housing-unit portfolio compositions, and availability ratios of diverse housing-unit types. Data are presented for the US, regions, metropolitan areas, and across different time periods. Effects of housing-unit supply on household structure and location are estimated. Results indicate that suburban areas, while growing in terms of the absolute number of diverse housing units constructed, are relatively undersupplying diverse housing units, thereby constraining households’ housing opportunities.

The Effects of Land Development on Municipal Finance

This review presents a conceptual model to understand and trace the effects of land development on municipal expenditures and revenues. It includes discussion of the how local voters determine levels of expenditures and levels of service subject to external constraints. It also discusses the production function of local public services. This review and model can serve as a basis for evaluating fiscal projections for land development proposals. It finds that direct fiscal impacts measured in most fiscal impact analysis techniques are only a subset of the types of impacts that would likely be expected to result from land development within a community.

Does accessibility matter? Understanding the effect of job accessibility on labour market outcomes

In this study, we examine the effect of access to employment opportunities on labour market outcomes, especially focusing on unemployment rates and household income in the Chicago metropolitan area during 2000–2010. Using accessibility measures derived from detailed employment data, we calculate job accessibility by race and income. In order to deal with the endogeneity problem, we employ instrumental variables with a generalised spatial two-stage least square (GS2SLS) model with fixed-effects. Our findings suggest that job accessibility plays a significant role in explaining unemployment rates and household income. Consistent with Kain’s spatial mismatch hypothesis, increases in job accessibility for African Americans lead to decreases in unemployment. Results also show that increased job accessibility for low-income households not only reduce unemployment but also improve household income.

“Great Neighborhoods” for Whom? Comment on Talen et al., “What is a 'Great Neighborhood'?”

Neighborhood”? An analysis of APA’s top-rated places. Journal of the American Planning Association, 81(2), 121–141. Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project, Inc., No. 13–1371 (U.S. Supreme Court, June 25, 2015). Retrieved from http://www.supremecourt.gov/ opinions/14pdf/13-1371_m64o.pdf U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. (2015). Mission. Retrieved from http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/ about/mission

Zoning Restrictiveness and Housing Foreclosures: Exploring a New Link in the Subprime Mortgage Crisis

In this article, Professor Chakraborty and his students use high-quality, detailed zoning data from a sample of six metropolitan regions to examine the intrametropolitan distribution of foreclosure risk. Their main finding is that municipalities with more restrictive residential zoning saw higher rates of foreclosure from 2005 to 2008. This is certainly an important finding, and it is the first article I am aware of that connects intrametropolitan variation in foreclosure activity with land development regulations. As such, it not only improves our understanding of foreclosure patterns during this period but also offers an intriguing addition to the larger and growing literature on the price and sorting effects of zoning and other land development restrictions. My comments focus on placing these findings in a larger debate about land development restrictions and the foreclosure crisis, suggesting a possible alternative interpretation of their results, with suggestions for continued research. First, this study utilizes high-quality, consistentlymeasured zoning data from a sample of six metropolitan regions. The sample covers different geographical regions and regulatory regimes. It builds on previously published research by the authors and colleagues, which offer important insights into zoning and housing development (Chakraborty, Knaap, Nguyen, & Shin, 2010; Knaap, Meck, Moore, & Parker, 2007). Collecting high-quality and consistent zoning data for almost all of themunicipalities in one region is a difficult enough task, and the authors have presented this information for sixmetropolitan regions!Despite great interest for decades in the effects of zoning on land development and housing outcomes, as a research community, we still do not have the type of consistently interpreted zoning data across places and time that are needed. The authors should be commended and applauded for their ongoing National Science Foundation–funded research to expand these data to cover more areas. Although we have some good high-quality regulatory indices to measure land supply restrictions across metropolitan areas (Pendall, Puentes, & Martin, 2006; Saiz, 2010), these sources are really designed to measure intermetropolitan variations, not intrametropolitan variations. I think it is important to put these results in context, particularly given that these results might be interpreted erroneously as support for the “smart growth caused the crisis” nonsense. It is worth repeating what these data do and do not say. The results in this article suggest that there were higher rates of foreclosure (after controlling for the proportion of subprime loans,