14 Points

On June 18^th, the NPR program On Point, hosted by Tom Ashbrook, had a very interesting episode on livable cities. He interviewed Tyler Brûlé of Monocle Magazine, whose research team issued a list of the top cities. The criteria are only available for subscribers, but Brûlé mentioned the homicide rate, environmental sustainability, quality health care, commuting patterns and other factors that add “friction” to urban life. Remarkably only one U.S. city came in the top 25: Honolulu. Ashbrook asked: why are U.S. cities so poorly rated? I believe the answer lies primarily in land use regulation.

U.S. cities are unique compared to their OECD counterparts in having highly concentrated poverty. The reason for this is that the U.S. gives more power to local governments to regulate land use. Anti-density zoning laws exacerbate economic and racial segregation, as I have shown with Doug Massey. Segregated cities have higher crime rates and lower measures of trust, which would depress livability measures. Moreover, anti-density zoning encourages sprawl by creating low density suburban enclaves as Rolf Pendall has shown. This leads to longer commute times.

So how did Honolulu get on the list? One guest on Tom Ashbrook’s show cited the influence of Japanese immigrants (roughly one fifth of the population). Another more rational explanation is that Hawaii has a uniquely centralized system of zoning laws. The reason is that it has no municipal governments. As far as I know it is the only state with this arrangement. In fact, the entire metropolitan area of Honolulu consists of one county which has sole regulatory authority over zoning, and a state level planning commission decides how land is classified. In New Jersey, there are 566 sub-county local governments with land use power. In short, legal institutions governing land use explain the mystery of Honolulu’s success and the relative failure of other U.S. cities to be more frictionless or otherwise pleasant places to live.