This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, June 22,

I'm Caleb Brown.

The high cost of housing relatively stagnant economic performance

at racial and economic segregation. Is it possible that ending... economic So he's author of the new book, Arbitrary Lines,

How Zoning broke the American City, and how to fix it.

We spoke earlier this month.

This may seem like a dumb question,

the kind of question you get in the first class of an intro to anthropology or sociology or urban economics. Why do people want to live in close proximity to one another?

That's a great way to start the conversation.

Right, why do people form cities?

Cities are noisy, smelly, they're more expensive.

On all of these quality of life margins that can be worse to a greater or lesser degree. Why do people live in cities and why have humans lived in cities like basically all of human history?

A simple reason, which I think something who I understand, people who appreciate markets should be able to understand, is that cities allow us to connect with other people.

They allow us to tap into large labor markets, for example. They allow us to find the job that's perfect for us. They

allow us to exchange both in goods and ideas with other people who are working on the same

issues as us. And in this way they make us all richer and more productive and more innovative.

And you know you go through in your book various economists work in sort of detailing the, in fine terms, in almost granular terms, what the value

is to, one, the broader economy of having people easily be able to move from one

place to another to take advantage of opportunities and it seems that zoning in in so many ways stymies that effort at great cost.

Yeah well historically Americans move from poor, less productive parts of the country to richer, more productive parts of the country.

So this happened even as late as World War II, right? So of

course you have the great migrations of African Americans out of the south to the northeast

...