San Jose City Planning Threatens Repeat of Los Angeles’ Errors
To: URBAN AFFAIRS EDITORS
Contact: Jacob Grier, manager of media relations of Cato Institute, +1-202-789-5200, jgrier@cato.org
Cato scholar argues that laws and regulations drive up home prices, increase congestion
WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — With its proximity to some of the world’s hottest industries, San Jose should be among the nation’s fastest growing cities. Instead, population growth has been very low and high-tech employers have relocated to more affordable places. In the policy analysis “Do You Know the Way to L.A?” Cato Institute senior fellow Randal O’Toole explains how restrictive city planning and misspending on public transportation have stunted growth in California, offering lessons to planners in major cities everywhere.
O’Toole sheds light on how local agencies have restricted the expansion of development to the detriment of their communities. “Because these city governments have an interest in keeping the taxes generated by growth within their boundaries, they have effectively become a tool to use against so-called sprawl,” he writes. “The result is that California’s urban areas are the densest, most-congested, and least-affordable housing markets in the United States.”
San Jose and other cities have addressed this density with intensive spending on public transit. O’Toole contends that in most cases this money would be much better spent on highways. “Many people support rail transit because they hope it will allow them to drive on uncongested roads,” he writes. “In fact, outside of New York City, U.S. transit systems carry so few commuters that even if rail transit doubled transit commuting, people on the road would not notice any difference.”
O’Toole concludes with 10 policy recommendations, including ceasing the fight against sprawl, eliminating development subsidies, introducing transit competition, and spending discretionary transit funds where they are most cost effective. The problems addressed are not unique to California. O’Toole concludes from the state’s planning follies that “California’s experience should teach other states that such laws and policies can have serious unintended consequences for housing, employment, equity, and transportation.”
Link to study: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8738
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SOURCE Cato Institute
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