The third part of Property and Freedom, about 50 pages long, returns to material of more general interest: the real-world consequences of zoning and land use planning. It is time to chain the reporters back to the tables and resume the readings. Siegan notes the immense costs of local regulations, many of them unnecessary to protect public health or safety, and their impact on families of modest means. He documents the tendency of the wealthy to vote for increasing regulations and the poor to vote against them, an accurate indicator of winners and losers. He notes that zoning keeps expanding on the foundation of its own failures: "[Zoning] usually does not work as represented....Each new strategy is touted as a remedy for the failings of the old, but it too will fail to measure up to the expectations of its proponents."
Siegan examines the experience of Houston, which relies on restrictive covenants enforced by the city rather than zoning. He looks at the California Coastal Commission and other institutions that have sent housing prices in the Golden State soaring. He notes that many environmental laws are designed to secure the personal pleasure of their supporters rather than any real environmental need. He punctures commonly heard arguments that the United States is running out of space and needs to cram its citizens together into ant heaps. He observes the tendency of zoning boards to be captured by the most vocal and their indefatigable efforts to foist costs onto outsiders.
In the end, Siegan is talking about two different philosophies of government. One relies on control by experts, detailed planning, elitist arrogance, and an astonishing disregard of reality. The other relies on respect for individual rights, the amazing ability of markets to produce a rich variety of physical environments, and the genius of an inventive and free people. For too long, the first philosophy has dominated our metropolitan areas. The time has come to stop using its history of failure as the rationale for yet more arrogance and flights into unreality, and to try the second.
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