When it comes to land controls, the public sector has made the bigger blunders

See ‘Key to the City’ Review: The Right Way to Rezone: On the issue of land use, are the errors made by private entrepreneurs worse than the errors made by public regulators? by Edward Glaeser. He reviewed the book Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World by Sara Bronin. Excerpt:

"Both libertarians and interventionists can appreciate the beauties of the best-curated urban spaces, such as the Paris created by Georges-Eugène Haussmann in the 19th century. Both libertarians and interventionists can agree that private developers sometimes create ugly structures. The critical disagreement between them is whether the errors made by private entrepreneurs are worse than the errors made by public regulators. When it comes to land controls, I’m pretty confident that the public sector has made the bigger blunders.

Ms. Bronin is optimistic both about the ability of public regulators to get land-use restrictions right and about the ability of those restrictions to achieve larger social goals. She is certainly correct that land-use restrictions can enforce an aesthetic vision on a neighborhood. It is also clear that regulations can limit the growth in America’s most productive and greenest areas and make prices far too high in those places. But it is far less clear that eliminating parking requirements would have any visible effect on Americans’ fondness for driving.

While the more libertarian-leaning readers among us may not agree with Ms. Bronin, they will still learn from her. She is thoughtful and armed with an engaging trove of anecdotes about modern zoning reform. She writes fluently and has important insights. But her confidence in the good that can come from better land-use regulation does seem like another triumph of hope over experience."