An Unpersuasive Argument for Selling Development Rights: Commentary on the Article “Land as Airspace: How Rezoning Privatizes Public Space (and Why Governments Should Not Give It Away for Free)”

Funding urban governments is important and in places with weak governance, it may be the case that selling development rights is the most viable option for raising local revenue. Murray and Gordon, however, do not make such a conditional argument in their essay “Land as Airspace”. They argue that governments should charge landowners for development rights and not upzone land “for free” to stimulate housing development, in opposition to recent zoning reforms not to other land-based revenue-raising strategies. This framing is unpersuasive and their proposal does not present a logically coherent case that charging for upzoning achieves housing goals (production or affordability) that upzoning alone does not. The essay ignores existing empirical research on zoning and housing development that contradicts its arguments and presents policy proposals without considering their effectiveness or the tradeoffs they imply. The essay also neglects the fact that most of the recent, largest, and most controversial upzoning programs did not change air rights at all.