This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, October 19th, 2017.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Zoning is largely a local concern, but there's no reason it has to be, especially when you

consider how much economic expansion

might be left on the table when Nimbies, or those who chant not in my backyard, control land use.

Emily Hamilton blogs at Market Urbanism.

We spoke last week about states, zoning, and economics.

We've discussed this before, but there is this fight that seems to exist between local governments and states over how to plan.

How do local communities think of zoning?

Do they view it as this is our place?

We're going to set whatever rules we want and the state doesn't have any role in making that those kinds of decisions.

There's some variation across states but in general that's exactly right.

Local governments very closely guard their right to regulate land use and determine the types of development that will be allowed within their jurisdiction and

type of development will be.

All right, so the natural libertarian impulse is to say,

well, look, as long as we can move planning of any variety from the feds to the states that's

probably better if we can move planning from the state to local community.

That's probably better.

In many ways, it lowers the exit costs

for people who don't like the regulatory regime

that they're living in and they can more easily move from one regime to another and

people can vote with their feet and decide, well I don't like this package of services

...