What Planners Know

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings: To understand how local land use regulation affects housing development, many researchers have surveyed planners about their jurisdictions’ policies and practices. But researchers have not systematically assessed whether such surveys yield valid and reliable information. We provide such an assessment by analyzing nine surveys conducted between 1988 and 2018 in California, the state where concern about underproduction of housing has been most pronounced. Each survey attempted to inventory local land use regulations, and some surveys also queried planners about their subjective perceptions regarding constraints on housing development. We find strikingly different responses to similar inventory questions about specific land use regulations in two surveys conducted months apart in the same municipalities, casting doubt on the reliability of such measures. Regression analysis reveals that subjective survey measures concerning land supply and density restrictions predict subsequent housing production, unlike counts of purportedly objective measures. Comparing survey data with recently developed GIS data indicates planners identify land supply as a significant constraint on residential development in municipalities where a relatively low proportion of land is vacant or in agricultural use, while identifying regulatory restrictions as a constraint in jurisdictions with little land zoned for multifamily use.

Takeaway for practice: Asking planners to identify which land use regulations their localities have “on the books” does not provide a clear measure of regulatory stringency. By contrast, municipal planners’ subjective perceptions may capture otherwise unmeasurable characteristics of local land use policy. Although planners’ subjective perceptions can provide a relatively holistic measure of local land use policy, they have limited value for policy prescription. Given the problems of survey-based measures, state and federal government agencies should collect, harmonize, and distribute data concerning local land use regulation, including zoning district designations. Fair housing assessment tools and regional planning processes could facilitate these activities.

Keywords:

• housing
• land-use regulation
• survey research
• zoning

This article is referred to by:

Knowing What Land Use Regulations Localities Have “On the Books” Can Reveal Regulatory Stringency—And Much More

What’s Wrong With Objective Questions?

Lewis and Marantz’s “What Planners Know”: A Springboard for Further Analysis

Planning Knowledge and the Regulatory Hydra

What Planners Do Know: Their Community’s Culture

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are grateful to Max Neiman, Ned Levine, and Rolf Pendall for sharing their survey data with us. We thank Scott Bollens, Editor Ann Forsyth, and the anonymous reviewers for numerous constructive comments. Any errors are the authors’ alone.

RESEARCH SUPPORT

Marantz acknowledges the support of the Hellman Fellows Fund.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

Supplemental data for this article can be found on the publisher’s website.

NOTES

Notes

1 The two research groups were aware of each other’s activities but do not appear to have extensively analyzed the intersurvey correspondences (Donovan & Neiman, 1992b, p. 333, n. 2; Glickfeld & Levine, 1992, p. 13, note 25).

2 Where ln(Y) = α + βX + ε, a 1-unit increase in X produces an increase in E[ln(Y)] of $\widehat{\beta }$, so that a 1-unit increase in X multiplies E[Y] by ${\mathit{e}}^{\widehat{\mathrm{\beta } }}.$ For example, based on the coefficient of −0.335 reported for the UCRGPG survey in Table 5 (row 4), we have e^−0.335 ≈ 0.72, indicating that a 1-unit increase in the perceived importance of density restrictions in constraining or slowing residential development is associated with a 28% decrease in multifamily units subsequently permitted.

3 The G&L 1988 survey instrument asks whether a jurisdiction has adopted “measures,” which it defines to include “initiatives adopted by the voters or regulatory ordinances adopted by the city council” but to exclude “resolutions or other policy statements” (Glickfeld & Levine, 1992, p. 92).

4 The UCRGPG and PPIC surveys include several questions beginning with the phrase, “Does your city have a FORMAL policy to…” (Lewis & Neiman, 2000, p. 10).

5 For example, a bill proposing to streamline approval processes for multifamily housing invokes findings from research based on the G&L surveys (Cal. Senate Bill 4, Dec. 3, 2018, sec. 1(a)(2); compare with Jackson, 2016). In analysis of a similar bill, the California Senate Housing Committee cited the TCHI survey (State of California, Senate Committee on Housing, 2019, p. 10).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paul G. Lewis

PAUL G. LEWIS ([email protected]) is an associate professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University.

Nicholas J. Marantz

NICHOLAS J. MARANTZ ([email protected]) is an assistant professor in the Department of Urban Planning & Public Policy at the University of California, Irvine.