Growth Management Revisited: Efficacy, Price Effects, and Displacement

This article uses California as its lens to focus on three unresolved questions concerning the effectiveness of local growth control and management (LGC&M) programs. I conclude that some types of LGC&M programs, principally residential caps, annexation controls, and voter-enacted super-majority approval requirements, do appear to significantly limit population growth in the cities that adopt them. I also find that LGC&M programs that do not constrain housing production below their communities' shares of regional demand for housing are not principally responsible for high housing prices and rents. Finally, LGC&M programs are associated with an increased likelihood of infill development in the cities that adopt them, and with growth displacement to nearby communities.