Solutions to California’s housing shortage invariably focus on increasing the density of preexisting cities and suburbs. Legislative solutions include SB 375, passed in 2008, which “incentivizes” cities and counties to approve high density land developments, and the failed (this time) SB 50, which would have forced cities and counties to approve high density development proposals. One cannot...

Editor’s Note: These few paragraphs by “anti-planner” Randal O’Toole say everything that needs to be said about how flawed policies artificially inflate the price of housing, making it unaffordable to any middle class family. California provides perhaps the most egregious example of this misanthropic bias towards “smart growth,” and “urban service boundaries,” the practical effect...

Editor’s Note:  The median price of a home in San Francisco has just topped $1.0 million. The median price for homes throughout California, measured at $466,000 in June 2014, edges close to a half-million. Nobody, apart from the very wealthy, can really afford homes at these prices. Yet these outrageous prices are entirely the result...

One of the core barriers to economic prosperity in California is the price of housing. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Policies designed to stifle the ability to develop land are based on flawed premises. These policies prevail because they are backed by environmentalists, and, most importantly, because they have played into the...

Among university professors, government planners and mainstream pundits there is little doubt that the best city is the densest one. This notion is also supported by a wide number of politically connected developers, who see in the cramming of Americans into ever smaller spaces an opportunity for vast, often taxpayer-subsidized, profiteering. More recently density advocates cite...