We analyze land-use regulation and the determinants thereof across Swiss municipalities. We construct several residential development stringency indices based on a comprehensive survey. These indices capture various aspects of local regulation and land-use coordination across jurisdictions....

In this work, we present a gridded dataset about land cover, population density, real estate, and transportation in 192 worldwide urban areas representing together 800 million people. While population density and land cover are secondary data extracted from the GHS-POP and the ESA CCI databases...

To meet the dire need for housing following Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and Federal Emergency Management Agency officials created lists of potential sites for trailer parks. We analyze approved sites to track which factors were linked with larger (or smaller) numbers of trailers and trailer...

This paper attempts to explain two basic facts of segregation in the United States in recent decades. The segregation of blacks remains everywhere higher than the segregation of Latinos and Asians, but the levels are converging. Previous research stresses things like urban form and racial...

As green building activity continues to rise across the country, some state governments decided to create incentives that would motivate developers to voluntarily pursue third party certification for their real estate projects in order to assist in meeting sustainability and environmental goals....

This paper discusses the principles that determine firstly how cities evolve over seven phases in what I call the Affinity Factor model. Secondly, we see how Affinity Factor model may help understand how development spreads or distributes within the city. We observe how these principles impact...

The built environment is characterized by man-made physical features that make it difficult for certain individuals — often poor people and people of color — to access certain places. Bridges were designed to be so low that buses could not pass under them in order to prevent people of color...

In the last quarter-century, both Bogota and Jakarta built bus rapid transit systems. Bogota’s is widely credited as a success; Jakarta’s not. To understand why, we look back more than a century to the roots of initial transit investments in these two cities. We credit Bogota’s current...