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- Title
Is Zoning a Negative-Sum Game?
- Authors
Mills, David E.
- Abstract
The article presents various aspects of zoning. Zoning is the primary tool used by localities to regulate land use. The evolution of zoning practice in the U.S. from its start in New York City in 1916 is a familiar story. The economic purpose of zoning is to remedy market failure stemming from externalities among urban land uses. By separating, excluding, and limiting dissimilar land uses, zoning purportedly improves resource allocation and produces net social benefits. Notwithstanding these distortions, zoning's propensity to squander resources goes beyond them. Even where zoning upholds an efficient pattern of land use, large social costs can be imposed in implementation. These stem from rent-seeking efforts by landowners who try to capture the rents created by zoning. In the extreme-and the sufficient conditions demonstrated below are not very stringent-rent seeking dissipates so many of zoning's benefits that no zoning is more efficient. Where this happens, zoning is a negative-sum game.
- Subjects
UNITED States; ZONING; URBAN planning; LAND use; REGIONAL planning; ZONING law
- Publication
Land Economics, 1989, Vol 65, Issue 1, p1
- ISSN
0023-7639
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2307/3146258