New Urban Development - 9780813547930

"Claude Gruen weaves his firsthand experiences into a highly readable account of how and why America's cities have evolved throughout this century. His thirteen prescriptions for fixing America's urban ills are a must read for policy makers and lay readers alike."--- Richard Peiser, Harvard University

"In New Urban Development, Claude Gruen has delivered an authoritative review of the failures of poorly designed land-use regulation and how it distorts housing. He captures in a persuasive fashion the good versus bad regulation that drives development, providing a valuable contribution to our understanding of smart urban policy."---Asieh Mansour, RREEF

"Only someone with Claude Gruen's thoughtful history could put this together. A fascinating walk through our development past that ends with very practical, how-to suggestions for a rational urban development policy going forward."---Peter Rummell, retired chairman & CEO, The St. Joe Company

The banking crisis and subsequent recession are results of the local planning laws and practices that have stifled competition, discouraged innovation, and artificially pushed up prices in America's most economically vibrant regions. Economist and consultant Claude Gruen unravels the story of the unintended consequences that resulted from the evolution of local zoning, growth controls, and laws designed to increase housing affordability.

New Urban Development traces how locally induced housing cost increases led federal policy-makers to toss out the safeguards against lending excesses that had been put in place during the 1930s. But the story begins much earlier, during the colonial era, continuing up through the mortgage collapse that ushered in the recession of 2008. In his sweeping history of these issues, Gruen considers gentrification, environmentalism, sprawl, anti-sprawl movements, and more. His clarification of how urban development change occurs backs up his recommendations for increasing the production of housing and replacing obsolete commercial and industrial spaces with development that serves the twenty-first-century economy. New Urban Development specifies thirteen changes to policies at the federal, state, and local levels to provide better and less expensive urban housing, desirable neighborhoods, and thriving workplaces across the country.