Thời thế thay đổi

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Recall the neighborhood where you spent your childhood (tuổi thơ). For most Americans, it would have been a neighborhood of detached single-family houses (khu vực có nhiều ngôi nhà biệt lập). My thesis in this Article is simple: if you were to visit that same neighborhood decades from now, it would remain virtually unchanged (hầu như không thay đổi). One reason is economic: structures typically are built to last. But a second reason, and my focus here, is the impact of law. The politics of local zoning (quy hoạch địa phương), a form of public land use regulation that has become ubiquitous (có mặt khắp nơi) in the United States during the past century, almost invariably works to freeze land uses in a neighborhood of houses.

…The zoning strait-jacket binds (ràng buộc) a large majority of urban land in the United States. Los Angeles and Chicago, two of the nation’s densest central cities, permit the building of only a detached house on, respectively, 75% and 79% of the areas they zone for residential (khu dân cư) use. In suburban areas, the percentage typically is far higher. In a companion study of zoning practices of thirty-seven suburbs in Silicon Valley, Greater New Haven, and Greater Austin, I found that, in the aggregate, these municipalities had set aside 91% of their residentially zoned land (71% of their total land area) exclusively for detached houses.

…Absent overly strict regulation (quy định chặt chẽ), suppliers of goods in a market economy are able to adapt to changes in supply and demand conditions. The freezing of land uses in a broad swath (dải đất rộng) of urban America prevents housing developers from responding to changes in consumer tastes about where and how to live.