New Urban Development

The recent recession is one result of how local planning laws and practices 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 behind how these unintended consequences have resulted from the evolution of local zoning, growth controls, and laws intended 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.

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.""Claude Gruen weaves his first-hand 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.""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.""This volume is simply a must read for anyone with an interest in housing policy and the evolution of urban spatial structure in the US. Gruen, an urban economist, begins with a first-rate chapter on housing policies and housing prices. Other chapters in the book that are especially effective address topics such as land use, neighborhood transformation, and sprawl. The final chapter, which contains 13 policy recommendations, should be required reading for any urban planner or urban economist who might affect public policy. Highly recommended.""Most books on urbanization are long on history and short on solutions. In this book, the focus is on positive and clear articulation of changes that provide opportunities for a strengthened economy.

Claude Gruen, principal economist of Gruen Gruen Associates, has published extensively on urban economics and land use policy.