Author Archives: Michael Lewyn

Are Foreigners to Blame for High Housing Prices?

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by Michael Lewyn

Every so often I read an argument that says something like this: “There’s no way that rents can ever go down in expensive cities like New York and San Francisco, because rich foreigners are buying up everything, and as a result demand is essentially infinite. So there’s really no reason to allow new apartments because the foreigners will just buy them all.”

This argument could certainly be true in theory: for example, if an entire city were so expensive that only wealthy foreign investors could afford to live there. But it doesn’t seem to fit the social reality of the expensive city I am most familiar with (New York).

If demand was essentially infinite, there would be some evidence of this fact other than high real estate prices. For example, if New York was growing faster than any city in the United States, there might be a credible argument that new demand is truly insatiable. In fact, many low-cost cities are growing far more rapidly than New York and yet have cheaper rents. Between 2000 and 2010, Austin and Raleigh (both of which are far cheaper than New York) grew by 20 and 46 percent, respectively, while New York grew by less than 10 percent.

It could be argued that New York is dissimilar to other high-growth cities, because the number of wealthy foreigners is so huge that it makes New York a high-growth city. For example, if New York had to accommodate not only half a million new residents per decade but also three million wealthy foreigners seeking second homes, its housing-consuming population would have grown by about 45 percent over the past decade, about the same level of population increase as Raleigh. But are there really that many wealthy foreigners in the New York housing market? Continue reading →

The Case Against Jaywalking Laws, Part 2

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by Michael Lewyn

Some months ago, I wrote that laws against so-called “jaywalking” (that is, crossing in places other than crosswalks or where traffic lights encourage pedestrians to cross) fail to promote safety, because traffic lights are inadequate guides to safety. When crossing midblock, a pedestrian need only watch out for traffic coming in one direction—right toward her. By contrast, when crossing at a light, a pedestrian may be in less danger from cars coming straight at him, but may be attacked by cars making left and right turns. Moreover, it is not at all clear that jaywalking is a major cause of pedestrian fatalities; although most crashes do occur outside intersections, these crashes often occur in places where there is no easily available crosswalk. According to traffic writer Tom Vanderbilt, “While jaywalking is often cited as a cause of pedestrian accidents, less than 20 percent of fatalities occurred where a pedestrian was crossing outside an easily available crosswalk.” And even where a pedestrian is jaywalking, a crash may be caused primarily by driver misconduct.

However, my article did not fully address the social harms caused by these laws. I did mention that to the extent these laws discourage walking, they increase traffic danger, because more cars mean more potential crashes.

But even if this were not the case, the social benefits of jaywalking laws might be outweighed from their costs. In particular, jaywalking laws are harmful from a public health perspective, a social equity perspective, and a libertarian perspective.

The public health costs from increased driving have been amply discussed in smart growth literature. But just to summarize the key issue, when we drive instead of walk, we create two major types of public health risks. First, we harm ourselves. Less walking means less exercise, which means an elevated risk of many diseases; for example, the risk of type 2 diabetes is 31 percent lower for participants who engaged in regular moderate-intensity physical activity such as walking. Second, people who drive more and walk less endanger the rest of society. Even leaving aside the risks of climate change, particulate matter and other pollutants emitted from motor vehicles create significant costs. For example, one study found that particulate matter emitted from motor vehicles creates $211.6 million of health care costs in Auckland, New Zealand, alone. So, to the extent jaywalking laws reduce walking, they create increased risks of harm for both their intended beneficiaries and for society as a whole. Continue reading →

Maybe Urban Schools Aren’t So Bad

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by Michael Lewyn

It is conventional wisdom that big cities have problems retaining the middle class because of poor schools.  But many older cities labor under a disadvantage that their suburbs don’t have — lots of students from underprivileged background.

A recent study suggests that when one controls for social class, Chicago schools are actually not so bad. This study compared the test scores of Chicago’s elementary schools with those of other Illinois schools with similar poverty rates, and calculated a “Poverty-Achievement Index” (PAI) based on this comparison.  As it happens, 55 of the 100 schools with the best PAIs were in Chicago- which is to say, their test scores were better than those of suburban or small-city schools with similar student bodies.

(Cross-posted from cnu.org)

What Robert Moses Got Right (and Kansas City Gets Wrong)

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by Michael Lewyn

Robert Moses is most famous (or perhaps infamous) for paving over large chunks of New York City with highways. But he also built and rehabilitated thousands of acres of parks and playgrounds; and in this area his contribution to the city was more unambiguously positive.

Moses believed parks should be used not just for leisurely contemplation but for active recreation; for example, he added eighteen playgrounds to Central Park alone. Moses also commonly added ballfields, tennis courts and other sports-oriented spaces to city parks.

By contrast, Kansas City has many chunks of lawn that include no active uses whatsoever; some of them don’t even include benches to sit on. These grasslands (see here for an example) waste lawn that could be used for housing or commerce, artificially reducing city density and value without creating any compensating value.

(Cross-posted at cnu.org)

Do Millenials Opt for Cities or Suburbs? Yes

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by Michael Lewyn

Over the past year or so I’ve seen numerous articles and blog posts asserting that millennials are moving to cities in large numbers, while other articles and blog posts assert that millennials prefer suburbs to cities.

So do millenials prefer cities or suburbs? The right answer is “yes.” On the one hand, it appears to me that millennials are more likely to favor city life than 20- and 30-somethings of 30 years ago. Thus, in a sense it is true that millennials favor cities. On the other hand, it is equally true that most millennials live the same kind of commuting lives as their parents, living in suburbs (or suburb-like areas that are technically within city limits) and driving to work.

How can both propositions be true? Let’s imagine a simple hypothetical. Suppose that there are 1,750 recent college graduates in metropolitan Townsville. Two hundred and fifty of them live downtown, 600 of them live in the city outside downtown, and 900 of them live in suburbia. Let us further suppose that this small region has 500 downtown residents, 3,000 city residents, and 8,000 suburbanites (not counting the above-mentioned millennials).

The 250 new graduates who move downtown have caused downtown’s population to increase considerably, from 500 to 750. Thus, one plausible headline could be: Millennials Cause Downtown Population to Increase by 50 Percent. Even though only about 15 percent of the graduates favor downtown, downtown’s preexisting population is so small that just a few hundred new residents will make the downtown considerably more populated. Continue reading →

Light Rail Doesn’t Always Mean Fewer Buses

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by Michael Lewyn

One common argument against new rail service is that rail cannibalizes bus ridership. One version of this argument is that riders of new light rail systems are nearly always former bus riders, so that any increase in rail ridership comes at the expense of bus ridership. A second version is that the costs of rail make it impossible for a region to maintain a first-class bus system.

If the first claim was correct, regions that introduced new light rail would be the most likely regions to have reduced bus ridership. A new post at City Observatory suggests that the correlation between new rail and reduced ridership is pretty modest. Daniel Hertz, one of our nation’s most interesting urban planning bloggers, has assembled data on bus ridership and service trends since 2000, including information from 39 urbanized areas with over 1 million people. His data shows that nine regions have experienced bus ridership losses of over 20 percent (Baltimore, Atlanta, Dallas, Cincinnati, Houston, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, San Jose). Four of these cities (Baltimore, Dallas, Houston, San Jose) have built significant new rail in the past couple of decades.  But five other cities in America’s Bus Ridership Dishonor Roll either lack significant rail service or (in the case of Cleveland) have primarily pre-2000 rail systems. By contrast, 30 other regions have experienced either ridership gains or more modest ridership losses: 13 of these regions have added new rail service, and 16 have not.* In other words, about one-fourth of the new rail cities (4 of 17) have suffered major ridership losses, and also about one-fourth of the other cities (5 of 22). Thus, the association between rail and reduced ridership is either nonexistent or fairly modest.

The association between new rail and bus service cuts is even weaker. Since 2000, six urbanized areas (Cleveland, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Detroit, San Jose, Houston) have reduced bus service, measured by route-miles, by over 20 percent. Only two of these regions (San Jose and Houston) have significant new light rail systems. (Two more, Cleveland and Pittsburgh, are “legacy rail” cities with significant but older rail systems). Continue reading →

When States Should Blow the Whistle

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by Michael Lewyn

Generally, states limit local governments’ means of raising tax revenue. Both Democratic and Republican governors consider it their duty to micromanage the property tax rates of local governments, and local governments can rarely institute a new type of tax without state consent. On the other hand, local governments tend to have free rein in land use matters; even relatively activist state governments tend to allow cities to choke off housing supply without state interference. Is this really the right way to do things?

Just as we ask ourselves, “When does the state have any business interfering with individual rights?”, we should also ask ourselves, “When does the state have any business interfering with a municipal government?” And just as states are most likely to get involved where an individual hurts other individuals, a state should be most willing to get involved where a city’s action affects people living outside the city—for example, the “tragedy of the commons” situation where a policy is rational for each individual city, but is not rational for the region as a whole.

Applying this principle, I am not sure why states should limit municipal taxing powers. When a city raises taxes, it only hurts itself, because it takes the risk that people will flee that city in search of less restrictive cities. And if several cities and towns in a region raise taxes, such tax increases become even less rational for a town that refuses to raise taxes, since that town can gain residents by being a tax haven.

By contrast, environmental issues are especially well suited for state (and for that matter, federal) regulation, because one city’s policies might harm residents of nearby municipalities. For example, suppose that a suburb allows unlimited development of wetlands within its borders. If the absence of wetlands causes increased flooding, the resulting damage may cross municipal borders and harm residents of nearby towns. Or if a suburb decides to build high-speed stroads and starve public transit so that its jobs are inaccessible by public transit, reverse commuters in other municipalities will have to drive to reach those jobs, causing pollution not just in the suburb in question, but also in their own neighborhoods. Thus, states should be responsible for wetlands regulation, and should perhaps play some rule in ensuring that suburban employment centers are transit-accessible. Continue reading →