Costs and benefits of state growth management programs: Evaluating their impacts on sprawl and housing markets in the U.S., 1990--2000

It is believed that state growth management programs (SGMPs) should have some advantages in curtailing sprawl. Meanwhile, it is also widely believed that regulations can constrain housing supply and thus increase house prices. Compared with local growth management, however, SGMPs may hold some promise to mitigate house price inflation. It is expected that SGMPs can break the local parochialism and provide more affordable houses by requiring statewide inclusionary zoning and by promoting compact development with higher densities. This study uses historical data from the 1990s to evaluate the impacts of State Growth Management Programs on urban sprawl and metropolitan-wide house markets.;The dissertation is organized into eight chapters. First, I introduce the concept of growth management. Then I discuss its characteristics and the history and evolution of SGMPs in the U.S. Third, I review previous empirical studies on the impacts of local and state growth management regulations on land use patterns and house prices. In the fourth chapter, I discuss the aims of this research. The fifth chapter introduces and develops the theoretical analyses of SGMPs' impacts on urban sizes. This is followed by a chapter that describes the management, the regression models used in this dissertation, the data and their sources, as well as a discussion of the exogeneity of the policy variables employed. The seventh chapter provides my statistical analyses and results. The final chapter concludes with important findings. First, SGMPs were ineffective in curtailing sprawl in terms of land consumption. Second, SGMPs with higher degrees of state involvement in local growth management were not more effective in curtailing sprawl than those with less involvement. Third, fragmented metropolitan governance contributed to urban sprawl. Fourth, different types of SGMPs had different impacts on housing supply. SGMPs mandating local comprehensive planning and authorizing principal plan review to state governments or SGMPs requiring all consistency might constrain housing supply and decrease housing demand. Fifth, economic growth is one of the primary determinants of growth in house prices. This dissertation also discusses some possible implications and limitations of the analysis.