Free Cities

The very liberal city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, just accepted the reality that excessive government regulations prevent adequate housing production. The city imposed what is being hailed as “one of the most ambitious changes to any city’s zoning in decades” by eliminating exclusionary zoning (permitting only single family homes) and allowing residential buildings ...

Single-Family Homes Don’t Fulfill Everyone’s Dreams – Or Budgets By Thomas Irwin | March 28, 2025 As the father of two young children, one of my primary roles is to be a sounding board for all kinds of desires from my children. These run the gambit from the ordinary and ...

Editor’s Note: In Part 3 of the Free Cities Center series, Serlet looks at an AI program that offers some benefits, but raises much more serious questions. Hangzhou’s City Brain In 2020, the city of Hangzhou in China announced that it had developed a “City Brain.” Hangzhou is an ancient ...

As EV Sales Lag, California Cities Double Down on Charging Stations California leads the charge to switch from petroleum-guzzling vehicles to electric cars. Cities and counties are grappling with the many problems involved in setting up charging stations in single-family homes, multi-family units and separate charging stations in shopping centers. ...

Editor’s Note: In Part 1 of Serlet’s series on municipal automation, he looked at a generally unobjectionable use of AI technology: Chicago’s restaurant-inspection program. As he explained:  There are countless mundane things that municipal governments do. These might include processing building permits, collecting residential taxes or distributing school supplies to ...

SACRAMENTO – Acclaimed journalist and policy analyst Steven Greenhut released today his latest book, The War on Suburbia, a compelling examination of how urban planning, government policies, and ideological battles threaten the future of suburban living. Published by the Pacific Research Institute, this book offers a critical look at how policymakers, environmentalists, and urban ...

Will cities’ transportation gravy train be derailed? By D. Dowd Muska | March 14, 2025 Sept. 30, 2026, may seem far off to you and me. But for many politicians, contractor and activists, the date is just around the corner. Their livelihoods depend on favorable provisions in the mammoth, multi-year ...

There are countless mundane things that municipal governments do. These might include processing building permits, collecting residential taxes or distributing school supplies to needy families. Many of these services are provided inefficiently. They also require large expensive staffs. The rise of technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) has created an ...

Even before the pandemic, such adaptive-reuse efforts were taking place. Lately it’s become more relevant given the escalation in housing costs along with low inventory across the residential marketplace. The Los Angeles wildfires also have provided impetus for this idea. It’s better for the environment when one doesn’t have to ...

The Wall Street Journal talked to Richard Green, director of the University of Southern California’s Lusk Center for Real Estate. Restrictions he mentioned were California Coastal Commission restraints and the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). And Proposition 13, the 1978 tax-limitation measure, left property as about the only area of ...