[nomocrypto]

Sane zoning laws would be much easier and do a lot more to ease the burden on people (I currently live in an “OMG no high rises! Won’t someone think of the neighborhood character!?” city and the rent is ridiculous). We just have to have the political will to change them, which unfortunately means angering very powerful monied interests, including Betty and Edgar who really love their now-valued-at-$500,000 house next to downtown.

[sien]

This is bang on. Looking at the graph look where Harris County (Houston) and Dallas are.

If the graphs were plotted with increase in population against the change in fertility then those places would be outliers.

Texas zoning and tax on houses work.

The funny thing about housing prices is that a state in the US has handled house prices so well with an economy that is doing well but Texas is often ignored in these discussions.

[CalRobert]

Texas has pretty restrictive laws about parking minimums. It would be illegal to build a pleasant neighborhood (for my definition of pleasant) in Texas.

Also, negative externalities of Texas' built environment (lung disease, cancer, potentially more autism near motorways(still early stages of research) dead people on roads, inability to travel or perform basic tasks for those who can't or prefer not to drive, being impoverished by your automobile, and the potential collapse of global civilization due to climate change) are not priced in, so often the neighbors or the rest of the world are paying for those houses.

[lotsofpulp]

Thousands of acres with mcmansions in gated HOAs and no walkability sounds terrible.

[krinchan]

> Texas zoning and tax on houses work.

Texas zoning also paved over all the marsh land that would've kept the city from flooding.

[MarkSweep]

I'm living in California and I have this idea for a zoning law: if a residential plot of land sells for more than $X million per acre, it is automatically up zoned to higher density. That way if the market says a location is really valuable more people get to live there.

I've theory-crafted other potential policies like "require any increase in office build density to be matched by increased residential density". That seems more potentially game-able than simply increasing density of properties the market had determined are valuable.