Quote of the day - on planning and inequality

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From Maximizing Opportunity Urbanism with Robin Hood Planning by
Tory Gattis for the Center for Opportunity Urbanism:

All in all, the net effect is a suffocating restriction on new housing supply even as demand increases, leading to skyrocketing home prices. This has the effect of making affluent NIMBY homeowners, who are disproportionately white and older, quite happy since their homes prices, sans new competition, are almost certain to increase. But the system works like a “Robin Hood in reverse” for younger, middle and working class families that lose out. This is a major driver of inequality - in fact, recent analysis indicates that homeownership completely accounts for the rise in inequality in recent decades. Planners have to take a hard look in the mirror and face an uncomfortable truth: whether they have been conscious of it or not, they have been direct accomplices in the rise of inequality and the decline of the middle and working class.

It really is time we recognised the cost of planning to our economy - not so as to abolish it but in order that we, and the planners, understand that planning controls are ipso facto anti-growth.

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