Learning from Land Use Reforms: Housing Outcomes and Regulatory Change Introduction

Zoning is changing. Paradigms that have stood for a century—like the predominance of single-family-only residential zoning—are being questioned and, in some places, abandoned. Political sacred cows, like regulatory mandates for new construction to provide the most valued of amenities, off-street parking, have been gored. Major reforms to loosen zoning and increase the supply of housing have taken place in cities big and small, in state houses and city halls, from coast to coast. Without overstating the case—in most places, the status quo remains unchanged, and even in the few, change has been incremental—there has been a groundswell of support for rethinking the restrictiveness of our land use system.

Indeed, interest in zoning reform is a rare spot of bipartisan agreement. This is a moment of ferment—and experimentation—in land use policy. That experimentation demands careful policy evaluation: rigorous research exploring why land use reforms have or have not worked; which policy levers matter most and how they interact; how different tools function in different housing market contexts; and overall, how policymakers can incrementally learn from the experiences of their neighbors. This paper introduces the role of this series in building this knowledge base for exploring land use reforms to increase housing supply.