The Antiplanner is flying to the East Coast today to help some local activists fight a proposed urban-growth boundary. Coincidentally, the Antiplanner’s faithful ally, Wendell Cox, released his annual international survey of housing affordability today.

As the Antiplanner has done for American states and urban areas, Cox shows that, among international urban areas, there is a high correlation between urban containment policies–whether through growth boundaries, greenbelts, or other tools–and unaffordable housing. Simple supply and demand says that when you restrict supply in the face of rising demand, prices will go up–and that’s exactly what we see all over the world.

Cox supplements data he has gathered himself from eight countries (plus Hong Kong) with additional data for urban areas in China and Malaysia. With a little work, it should be possible to add urban areas in non-English-speaking Europe. Perhaps we can have this done in time for the 2018 survey.

Urban containment does more than just make housing expensive. As the Antiplanner has shown in a recent paper, it also makes housing prices more volatile, increasing the risks of homeownership and driving down homeownership rates. It worsens, and may even be a primary cause of, income inequality, and increases unemployment by making it more difficult to move to find new jobs. Finally, it probably violates the Fair Housing Act because its effects tend to fall hardest on minorities whose incomes tend to be lower than average. For all of these reasons, cities and counties should not adopt growth restrictions and should repeal the ones they already have.