In a Q&A, a researcher digs into how cities can fix their planning systems to address housing crises.
Housing in cities across North America has become increasingly unaffordable. Most people blame land scarcity, rising construction costs, or speculative investors.
But in a study in the journal Urban Governance, Austin Zwick, associate teaching professor and program director for the policy studies program in the College of Professional Studies and the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, points to a less visible culprit: planning processes municipalities are using.
Zwick’s research examines how de facto discretionary approval systems—which require developers to meet all code requirements but also see approval depending on back-and-forth negotiations with regulatory bodies and case-by-case judgments from planners, elected officials, and sometimes organized public organizations—drive up housing costs and suppress supply.
In contrast, a “by-right” system allows developers to get approval, with no additional steps to follow, as long as they meet or “check every box” on the municipality’s list of requirements or standards.
“In theory, discretion is meant to allow flexibility and responsiveness,” Zwick says.
Negotiation with developers is intended to promote better outcomes by requiring them to build public amenities and social housing units they wouldn’t otherwise build. In practice, though, builders with the time, money, and political access can endure prolonged negotiations, and then they will pass those endured costs onto the buyers, whereas small-time builders can’t. The end result is that only large-scale luxury development gets built, not regular housing for regular people, he says.
Zwick offers a case study in his research of a stalled development in Vancouver, British Columbia, in which lengthy negotiations, public hearings, and political approvals added hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit to a condo building before construction ever began.
He suggests that tackling the housing crisis isn’t just about federal funding or sweeping new policy, but for local governments to streamline their own processes.
Here, Zwick, digs into what’s broken in planning processes, why it matters for the housing crisis, and what cities can do about it:
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