According to Albert O. Hirschman's famous dichotomy, citizens can express their preferences with their “voice” (by voting with ballots to elect better representatives) and “exit” (by voting with their feet to choose better places to live). Suppose, however, that ballot-voting is...

The world today is afflicted by inequality of wealth created in large part by monopolistic ownership of land. Across the globe, in cities like Rio de Janeiro, Yangon, Johannesburg, and London, landowners in control of urban real estate in hot job markets have created a housing shortage. Hong...

The politics of urban land use frustrate even the best intentions. A number of cities have made strong political commitments to increasing their local housing supply in the face of a crisis of affordability and availability in urban housing. However, their decisions to engage in “up-zoning,”...

In New York City, owners violated zoning regulations and opened up their basements, garages, and other floors to rent to people (particularly low-income immigrants) priced out of the formal market. The more than 100,000 illegal dwelling units in New York City (NYC) were referred to as “granny...

Human beings should live in places where they are most productive, and megacities, where information, innovation and opportunities congregate, would be the optimal choice. Yet megacities in both China and the U.S. are excluding people by limiting housing supply. Why, despite their many...

Defining the direct conflict between law and social norms as a tragedy and their reconciliation as a comedy, this paper serves as a case study of the mixture of tragedies and comedies of collective land governance in China. The term tragicomedy encapsulates such a mixture. This paper presents...

Eminent domain for economic development is both attractive and appalling. States need the power to condemn because so much land in America is inefficiently fragmented. But public land assembly provokes hostility because vulnerable communities get bulldozed. Courts offer no help. The academic...