The session was recorded.
Here’s the video and audio.
Earlier this week, planner M. Nolan Gray, author of the new book, “Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It” (Island Press 2022) joined our Land Use class at the University of Hawaii Law School to talk about zoning and housing.
The title of his talk was “Are zoning laws the cause of Hawaii’s housing crisis?” The subject matter is important, and the public was invited to join us. As you can see, there was a lot of interest in this critical topic and turnout was excellent.
Thank you to the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii for their sponsorship of the event, and for generously getting Mr. Gray to Honolulu for his in-person appearance. It was also nice to have refreshments following class, and a chance to “talk story” (as we say) with our speaker, the students, and our guests.
Grassroot recorded the session on video, and we shall post a link to it once it is published and available. If you could not join us for his talk, be sure to watch and listen to the recording. Some very compelling stuff.
The public was also invited.
(We let them know they arrived at the right place.)
All set up and ready for our guest speaker.
Recording posted here.
What is Zoning? A good question (the impression is that “zoning”
means all regulation of land uses). Not quite. Generally speaking, the term
only covers regulation of use, density, and height. Getting the terms correct
is important. Mr. Gray does not advocate for tossing all regulation,
only zoning. He advocates for a more planning-centric
approach. Read his book for the details.
The heart of the matter: how and why overly restrictive zoning
(see above) inevitably restricts the supply of housing by focusing
mostly on single-family residential. Leave zoning the way it is,
and you are effectively planning for an affordability crisis.
A good, engaged audience.
Mahalo, Nolan, for coming all this way.
We allocated plenty of time for questions from the audience.