Podcast
Trailer Parks, Zoning, and Market Urbanism with Nolan Gray
Today’s guest on Economics Detective Radio is Nolan Gray. Nolan is a writer for Market Urbanism and the host of the recently launched Market Urbanism Podcast.
Market urbanism is the synthesis of classical liberal economics and an appreciation for urban life. Market urbanists are interested in economic issues specific to cities, such as housing affordability and urban transportation.
Nolan wrote an article titled “Reclaiming ‘Redneck’ Urbanism: What Urban Planners Can Learn From Trailer Parks.” As Nolan points out, trailer parks are remarkable in that they achieve very high densities with just one- and two-story construction. They do so while providing remarkably low rents of between $300 and $500, or $700 to $1,100 per month to live in brand new manufactured homes. They are also interesting in that the park managers provide a form of private governance to their tenants.
A century ago, there were many kinds of low-income housing available to people of lesser means. Low-quality apartments, denser housing, and boarding houses have largely been regulated out of existence. The remarkable thing about trailer parks is that they haven’t been made illegal or untenable by regulation. The one thing trailer parks don’t have is a mixture of uses, but they get around this by locating close to business areas.
Cities in Europe and Japan, which didn’t adopt American-style zoning, have much higher density and more mixed-use neighbourhoods. Houston, which has taken steps to deregulate, has seen more development of this sort recently. It seems like dense, mixed-use neighbourhoods pass the market test whenever they are allowed.
