Zoning, Property Rights, and the Myth of Benevolent Planners
5th July 2013
Dartmouth economics professor Bill Fischel has posted “Fiscal Zoning and Economists’ Views of the Property Tax,” which will be a chapter in a revised edition of Fischel’s classic The Economics of Zoning Laws. Fischel provides a great overview of zoning, development, and property taxes, highlighting the important fact that zoning is fiscal in nature — that is to say, local governments use zoning to “preserve and possibly enhance the local property tax base.” … Contrary the great myth of benevolent city planners getting together and using the best available evidence to scientifically apply land-use regulations that will maximize social welfare, land-use regulations are developed like most government “goods”: through competing self-interested special interest groups fighting over benefits in the political arena.