Yet the bottom line remains: without smart growth’s land rationing policies, the severe escalation in home prices would never have reached such absurd levels. But the disaster in the highly regulated markets will be with us for years. The smart growth spike in housing prices turned what might have been a normal cyclical downturn into the most disastrous financial collapse since 1929.Wow. Speechless.
Ryan and Matt respond.
8 comments:
Wow! Speechless, is right. I would like this guy to explain what happened in my city where the words smart and growth have not and will not ever be muttered in the same sentence.
He mentions the Riverside-San Bernardino as a regulated market. In fact, the Inland Empire is very sprawling; it's just close to Los Angeles, which is not so much regulated as hemmed in by mountains. This is the problem with his argument that the high land prices on the coasts aren't about demand: in the one part of the country that has a regulated market next to an unregulated one, the unregulated one consists largely of people who'd have liked to live in the regulated market but were priced out.
You could say the same about the New York metro area, if it had a division as neat as LA Metro/Inland Empire. The New York exurbs sprawl plenty. The main limiting factor to their growth is that they're located two hours from Manhattan, because everything in between has already been developed.
The Krugman reference is misleading as well. Krugman blames the crisis on an inflationary monetary policy and an irrational belief that bubbles don't exist. He did divide the US into the Zoned Zone, where housing priced hyperinflated earlier this decade, and Flatland, where they didn't, but that was meant as a way of arguing that it really was a bubble rather than an ordinary boom.
Another ferocious attack from Cox again. Cox is just looking for more excuses for the continued perpetuation of sprawl, which is his preference, as well as that of O'Toole.
It's like blaming the victim for their own problems. Some on the right do that a lot, like why the poor are in their situation.
"WE'LL DO IT LIVE!!! F**K IT!!" - Bill O'Reilly
(Please note: I can't stand the way Bill O'Reilly shouts at his guests.)
Can he please explain to me then why housing closer to transit has fared better than housing further away?
People like O'Toole, O'Reilly & Cox love their nation so much they want to destroy it!
Obviously regulation was to blame. It is the bugaboo in all other circumstances as well. Gah!!!
The lack of logic in the sourced link is astounding. I am sorry to have followed it.
Yes, Smart Growth has led to a housing bubble in such compact traditional cities as Phoenix and Las Vegas, while the sprawling exurbs of Portland and Seattle provided plenty of room for cheap housing and no bubble. Wait a minute... if you look at the data, you find that it's the other way around. And I think we need to collectively start ignoring Wendell Cox, because basically, he's a troll.
Yeah, I'm speechless because I'm torn between "Fail!" "Christ, what an asshole," and "Who takes this guy seriously again?"
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