No Light Rail in Vancouver!

Summer Book Reviews #2: War on the Dream

Jul 3

2007

If anyone deserves the title of antiplanner, it is Wendell Cox. Wendell has challenged rail transit plans in Atlanta, Denver, Charlotte, and many other cities. For this reason, he has been called an anti-transit zealot, which is a typical tactic of the rail nuts to assert that anyone who doesn’t favor their particular flavor of transit must oppose all transit.

In fact, Wendell helped plan the Los Angeles rail network, and became a rail skeptic only after those rail lines went way over budget and, when finally built, ended up carrying far fewer riders than predicted. Now he insists that transportation funds be spent cost effectively, which greatly annoys people who think nothing of spending a $200 million a mile on a rail line that will carry fewer people than a $5 million lane-mile of freeway.

In the last few years, Wendell expanded his work to include smart growth and its effects on housing prices. His recent book, War on the Dream, discusses transportation policy, but really homes in on the latest land-use planning fads.

Urban-growth boundaries, greenbelts, and other land-use rules drive up land costs and housing prices and reduce homeownership rates. These “have the most negative effects on low-income households,” says Cox. Moreover, because most business start ups in America are initially financed by a second mortgage on the business owner’s home, reducing homeownership effectively reduces long-term wealth production. Thus, the antisprawl movement makes war on the American dream in more ways than one.

War on the Dream points out that the dream of mobility and homeownership is not just an American dream. Elsewhere in the world it is known as the Great Australian Dream, the Kiwi Dream, and the European Dream. It is, he shows, a universal dream. European cities are sprawling, having witnessed a huge migration to their suburbs in recent decades. People the world over are driving instead of walking or using public transport. While Americans drive for 81 percent of their travel, the supposedly more sustainable Europeans drive for 78 percent of their travel—and European driving is growing faster than in America.

Cox shows that land-use restrictions are responsible for the huge differences in housing affordability across America and around the world. In Houston, which has no zoning or planning, you can buy a very nice 2,200-square-foot home for $155,000. The same home in San Jose, which imposed a strict urban-growth boundary in 1974 and has numerous other planning restrictions, would cost $1.4 million.

While differences in incomes are responsible for a small part of the difference in prices, most is due to land-use rules. For example, Cox calculates that a median house in Houston costs less than three times median household incomes. A median home in San Jose is close to ten times median household incomes. War on the Dream provides similar data for cities all over the world and shows that those with the most land-use restrictions have the highest price-to-income ratios.

This book should be read by everyone who has to live in unaffordable housing markets as well as anyone living in a region where planners are talking about curbing urban sprawl.

Note: The Antiplanner has a limited number of copies of this book available for $20 including shipping to any U.S. address. If you are interested, email the Antiplanner.

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Reprinted from The Antiplanner