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The vice presidential candidates, Minnesota Governor Tim Walls and Ohio Senator Jade Events, they spent a lot of time talking about housing during Tuesday Night's presidential debate.
We in the state invested in making sure our housing was the biggest investment that we'd ever made in housing. It starts to make it easier. We cut some of the red tape. Local folks. Look, we can't do it at the federal level, but local folks make it easier to build those homes.
Well, what Donald Trump has said is we have a lot of federal lands that aren't being used for anything. They're not being used for National Park, They're not being used and they could be places where we build a lot of housing. And I do think that we should be opening up building in this country.
That was a JD Vance and before that Tim Walls at the Tuesday Night a Vice presidential debate on CBS. Many people argue that central to the housing crisis in the US is zoning, the notion that only certain things of certain sizes can be built in certain areas. We've got with us the perfect guest to help us understand this and to what extent that's true. Sarah Bronan is professor of law and here been planning at Cornell University. She's the author of a new book. It's called Key
to the City, How Zoning Shapes our World. She joins us from Washington, d C. Professor, good to have you with us. Is the housing crisis in the US the result of zoning?
Well, first, thanks for having me. I'm so excited to talk about zoning. And I would argue that yes, zoning, which is enacted at the local level by maybe thirty thousand counties and cities and towns across the country, has huge impacts on our housing market and our ability to provide affordable and accessible housing to people who need it.
We're talking about the idea of nimbiism and the idea that in certain areas you're only allowed to build a single family home of a certain size on a certain plot of land. And if Carol, we had zoning for more dense housing, we could build more housing and provide more people with shelter.
Yeah, so, how you know, I feel like this is something that we have been talking about for a long time, right, the housing shortages, and for people who work in major cities who can't afford to live in those cities, and nobody wants to build, and so they've got to commute long commutes to get into the city.
To get to their jobs.
So how do we change some of this And is it if we could just change zoning, would everything be fine?
Well, zoning is definitely just one piece of the puzzle. But Carol, you raised a really good example of people who have to live maybe out in the suburbs because we're not building enough housing where they want to live.
Or how they want to live.
So typically in this country, across far too many jurisdictions, we've seen zoning that provides what you might consider one size fits all or cookie cutter development, a house on a half acre or an acre, or even the size of a football field about two acres or more, all across this country dictated by zoning rules, and so we don't see town homes, we don't see multi family housing, we don't see more affordable options or more appealing options to people who may not want to drive, to seniors
who want to age in place. In some of those suburbs and in their small towns, we're not really providing that diversity of housing, and I think that has had huge ripple effects on our economy and on our growth.
When you think about zoning, is it twofold or threefold or fourfold? In other words, is it about supply? Is it about variety of housing being afforded? Is it also about thinking about this space itself? And that sometimes means open space and places to farm, do urban farming whatever, like, it's a lot of components.
Yeah, I think it's all of the But I want to touch on the last thing that you mentioned, which is essentially the characteristic of all these large zoning codes that make us push farther outward into farmland and into forest land. And essentially what we have said to developers to property owners is if you want housing, you've got to go outward to build. Now, that's a big problem for us from an environmental standpoint.
It's also a.
Big problem from a food security standpoint. So the point I try to make in the book is, hey, look around. Zoning is controlling a lot of the outcomes that we see, and some of the outcomes that we probably don't really want, not just as a resident in a particular town, but as Americans on the whole, trying to think about a broader approach to land development that will benefit our economy, our society, our food security, our transportation security, and so
much more. But housing, I think is one of the core issues. And when it comes to zoning.
What about something like historic preservation? And I'm asking you because you have a lot of experience with historic preservation. You served as the chair of the Advisory Council and historic preservation. Is that a position you still have. I think you're on office until twenty twenty five.
Yes, I still serve in this federal role, but I'm talking today in my professor role and as a preservationist. And from a zoning code standpoint, you do see a lot of zoning codes that do integrate some nod.
To historic structures.
And I think we love most about historic neighborhoods is you know, they're lively, they're dynamic. I think, got a lot of mix of uses, and they're beautiful. And to the extent that zoning can encourage that kind of formula, they don't now too often, but to encourage that and maybe to recreate and support the historic neighborhoods we have all.
The better, But is there this tension there between preserving history but also making sure that you rezone something for the future.
I think. I mean, if you're thinking about you know, there's a lot of dialogue about preservation being intension with housing development in particular, but if you look actually at the research, So I'll put on my professor.
Lea, I will say you have a lot of different hats. I think it's.
You know, just to say that, you know, the research has shown that historic districts in cities including New York City and la are denser than non historic districts.
And why is that.
It's because typically in historic neighborhoods, we've always allowed historic buildings to grow and change. If you think about, you know, before zone zoning was imposed about one hundred years ago on lots of towns that already existed, and so you know, you have that layer. And one of the things that I've noticed, I have a project called the National Zoning out List that log zoning codes all over the country.
One of the things I've noticed is that zoning codes have often like what gone reverse, how a neighborhood initially developed. For example, many zoning codes on what you might consider a historic main street say no housing on the upper floors. Well, that's exactly how those buildings developed, and that's what made those neighborhoods so vibrant and so attractive. Zoning fifty years ago might have said, okay, now this is one hundred percent commercial uses. You can't put housing up. But you
know that was a bad idea. We should go back to that historic mixing. We should go back to a twenty four to seven, you know, concept of some of these places so that we can really, I think, revitalize those communities.
This is super interesting.
I wasn't joking when I said she has a lot of hats. She's an architect, she's an attorney, she's a policymaker, an author, and a professor, just to name a few things.
So okay, now I feel like I've done nothing with my life.
It is super impressive. Having said that, I'm listening to you, and I feel like, so what.
I live in a historic neighborhood, and you know, there are rules when you do things, and it's as the years have gone by, the rules have gotten even tougher. And that has to do with adding on and all that kind of stuff. And yet the city seems to push in terms of newer development, squeezing things in almost everywhere.
And it's getting to point where's a little bit of a pushback and fight to kind of preserve some of the open space or preserve some of the old you know, train embankment or something like that that is part of the neighborhood. When does you know what's the right balance and how you think about development that is needed, maybe in terms of housing, but then there's over development that just makes it not a great place to live.
How do we assess that.
So zoning can be a really good tool for providing and protecting for urban space, for open space, especially in urban environments, and you know, you can zone for open space, you can zone for parkland, as they point out in the book, you can zone for street trees and the kind of environmental infrastructure that actually can benefit us, make
us healthier, make us calmer. But going back to your question on density in historic neighborhoods, I'm a proponent of lots of different housing options, whether it's carriage house conversions to accessory dwelling units, or you know, allowing for one, two,
three family housing where it's appropriate. But I'm also a big fan of looking outside of those historic districts to say what kind of compatible development can happen that can be complementary of the existing historic districts, because you do want to keep that sense of virucy, you do want
to allow historic neighborhoods to change. And I will say, you know, thinking about the approach to historic preservation, you've talked about, you know, add ons and additions, there's a whole other set of rules, historic preservation rules, design control rules that layer on top of zoning and that I've argued in other work is maybe sometimes too restrictive when we think too much about the material of a place and not about sort of the long term goals of
the community and the people who live there. And I think housing is one of those places where we could stand a little bit more flexibility when it comes to those design rules. I'll also just add, you know, I don't know where you live, but places like New York City, places like Hartford, where I had shared the Planning and Zoning Commission, have really taken a look at a different
kind of historic building stock. And that's industrial and manufacturing building stock and trying to figure out ways to rezone that for housing. Lots of cities have often sort of adopted a zoning code and then left it there for decades. I think that has really hurt the revitalization redevelopment of industrial neighborhoods and these big mill buildings and factories that.
Aren't well positioned.
We don't have the same kind of manufacturing demands anymore, but often they're in a neighborhood which had work or housing around it. So thinking about those historic buildings, repurposing those I think is also an important thing for cities to do.
Definitely in our neighborhood where they've repurposed some of it for residential. Now some of them have been torn down and maybe that's they just made choices that it just didn't make any sense. It becomes a mixture, but some have been definitely repurposed.
And Sarah, I live in South Brooklyn and the Gowanas area is a former industrial area that has been rezoned from a commercial and industrial into residential and one challenge that they've faced is that they're toxic chemicals that were used in industry over the last couple of centuries that are now seeping up, so that state now has to figure out a way to contain these because so many thousands of homes are being built there right now. We're gonna do some Yeah, we're going to hold that thought
because we're going to come back. We're going to do some news. Professor Sarah Bronan, she's the professor of law and or been planning at Cornell University. She's an architect, she's an attorney. She's the author of a new book, Key to the City, How Zoning Shapes Our World. I want to get right back to Sarah Bronan, professor of Law and a been planning at Cornell. She's the author of the new book Key to the City, How Zoning
Shapes Our World. She joins us once again from Washington, d C. I promised we'd talk about a little bit about Guwanas and then we're going to go around the country. In the last few minutes that we have, Professor Brown and you were saying something about guanas and the conversion from an industrial area to a residential area and the challenges that the area is dealing with toxic chemicals.
And that's why I said at the beginning of this conversation that zoning is just one piece and so thinking about you know, when cities are trying to figure out how do we revitalize this neighborhood, zoning is a critical part because it says how it can be revitalized. But there's all of these other issues too, including financing, including
environmental cleanup. You've tackled it in New York City at Guanas with a huge rezoning and you know, done some cleanup and you see a lot of development happening and
on the way. I use Baltimore in the book to talk about a different kind of industrial rehabilitation effort that's happening in the Remington neighborhood there, and different cities at different scales are trying different things, but in all of them, when you're thinking about revitalizing a neighborhood, reviving its economy, making new connections, making neighborhoods more accessible, zoning is an essential part of the discussion.
I want to go continue kind of with our some other places around the country. Having said that, I do want to ask you, might it be a city like Atlantic City or Detroit where revitalizing it continues to be year after year a struggle. Are there some areas that cannot be revitalized.
So both of these cities present very different studies of the issues. I mean when it comes to Detroit, I think what has happened there as has happened in Hartford in Buffalo similarly, post industrial cities that have seen population loss and have seen disinvestment, is that increasingly city leaders have turned to the zoning code. In Detroit's case, lots of different uses allowed in places they weren't before or as well as urban agriculture. You see that in Hertford.
Again where I work in Buffalo you saw and in Hertford you see elimination of minimum parking requirements which and pose significant costs on new housing. Those moves have really helped to encourage new investment because developers know with greater certainty exactly how much money they'll have to spend in order to get a development over the finish line, and
also thinking about things like process improvements. Zoning codes can be thousands of pages long in the case of New York City, and believe it or not, Boston is at the very top of the list at I think thirty eight hundred pages of zoning code and that I think comes with it inherently. It's a complexity, and so stripping away some of that complexity, writing the rules of the game in advance is a strategy that places like Detroit can use to help to spur economic growth through the
creation of certainty. And you see that across regulations, right, business, business people want certainty, and zoning is no different and land, of course a highly important commodity.
Okay, can we talk cars real quick? You mentioned minimum parking requirement being removed, something I think they did with some projects in New York City.
What does that mean minimum?
So correct me if I'm wrong, professor, But the idea with a development, you have to guarantee a certain number of parking spaces per number of units in a building.
Is that right?
That's right?
So what that means in some cases we've seen codes that require four parking spaces for a single apartment. Often what that means is that you're building more parking than housing. So what does that tell you about the jurisdiction's approach to housing development. It's almost like they're stacking the deck against new housing. We also know that parking is it's not beautiful. It's a lot of pavement. It is not necessary in places like New York City. But I'm going
to use New York City as an example. I know they're trying to change that right now with the City of Yes zoning proposal, but right now, overwhelmingly in New York City, a place where I think the majority of residents don't have cars or don't use them regularly, there are minimum parking requirements in the vast majority of land in New York City, including in Manhattan. Just posted New
York City to the national zoning out lists. It's a zoning outlest dot org if anybody wants to check it out, and you can see where those minimum parking requirements exist. And it's not the way that we should be developing our cities. We should be promoting lots of different kinds of ways of moving around, because again, not everybody wants to drive, not everybody can afford a car.
It's a perfect segway. Sorry I want to jump in because we only have three minutes left, but it's the perfect segway to talk about public transit and cars in the United States. And it just to me feels like this is such a car centric culture and this country was designed essentially for the Autumn Biel. And it makes me think that so much of what we see with zoning and development is inextricably bound to the idea that we are driving ourselves from one place to another place.
Convince me that I'm wrong.
You're right.
Is that what you wanted to hear, because.
No, that's not what I wanted to hear.
And I think it has huge negative consequences, not only on the environment in the form of sprawl, which we've talked about, but also on our health. And I used in the book an example of a neighborhood in Hartford where you have a thoroughfare that was rezoned in the nineteen fifties when we thought, oh, suburban commuters is exactly what we need to provide for and zone for gas stations and parking lots and strip malls and fast food joints.
And guess what happens. That's what that particular avenue became to the detriment in the form of asthma, in the form of obesity related illnesses of people in the immediate neighborhood. And so just in that one story, you see the power of zoning to completely reshape a community. An urban community that had been built out a century or more ago, that area with beautiful buildings on it, walkable and so on, and a lot of that got changed over. I think
it's a nineteen fifties nineteen sixties mindset. But again, too many zoning codes have just been sitting there with these cumulative effects on us now that we need to really revisit.
Sarah, I just got thirty seconds left hair climate change. How is that going to probably up end zoning codes in some ways just quickly.
Zoning is allowing far too many things to be built in places we have no business building. We are doing research on sea level rise. With the national zoning out lists, we're going to be seeing a lot more data on this come out, and I think to the extent that we are making these little decisions at the local level, we've got to start broadening this out and saying, how are zoning codes affecting our ability as a nation to
respond to climate change? And I think our answer will be unfortunately, we're not, but.
We can do better.
And that's the hope that I try to put forward in the book.
We can always do better.
I agree with you, Sarah Brennan, she's professor of Law and Urban Planning at Cornell University. Her new book, Key to the City, How Zoning Shapes Our World. Great stuff in at the book. She takes you to Ames, Iowa, she takes you to Alabama, she takes you to Vegas, Georgetown. Some specific situations and stories when it comes to zoning around the country.
So really cool.
Check it out. Yeah, exactly zoning.
I think every time we talk about residential real estate, that comes up, right.
Yeah, and I thank you.
I think fine. And that's why it's so hard at the federal level to make any change because these are local rules and regulations. Zoning at the local level.
Right, you can't just make a blanket.
Yeah. This is Bloomberg Business Week inside from the reporters and editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus global business, finance and tech news as it happens. Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebeck on Bloomberg Radio.
It is Bloomberg Business Week on this Thursday afternoon. Is that cheetos?
Dust?
I see? Isn't a cheetah?
Is it a crazy story?
We don't have We had cheetos upstairs and this in the blue.
I don't think it's a Bloomberg kind of snacky.
We had the baked cheetos. We didn't have them yesterday though, because I was looking for them the spicy spicy bag cheetas.
Now, I don't know.
After seeing this journal report, Hey you mentioned in video, Yeah, shares surged after CEO Jensen Wank said demand for the Blackwell chips is quote insane. Some other news out of the chip industry semiconductor space in recent days, Carol, you talked about this yesterday. Global semiconductor makers are monitoring supplies of high purity quarts. It's a material critical to the industry after Hurricane Helen halted production at two North Carolina mines that produce most of the world's supply.
Listen, we talk about this constantly, and we talk also about the chip woar, the battle for technological supremacy and the way that nations include the United States and China are trying to protect and build out their own semiconductor industries.
And we've got a great guest on this, Yeah.
Deetro Hanford is a CEO of NATCAST. It's a nonprofit that oversees the National Semiconductor Technology Center. This is a public private industry group. It works to promote research and development of semiconductors here in the US. Deirdre joins us from the San Francisco Bay area. Deirdre, good to have you with us. We're going to talk about the space
and what you folks are doing. Before we get to that, just give us an idea of the organization, where you get your funding, who you work with, what you do.
Well, first of all, thank you so much Carol and Tim for the opportunity to talk about the National Semiconductor Technology Center. And it was great to hear the two of the last three conversations you all had. We're about semiconductors.
The mice thing isn't so so connected to our field. Well, what we're all about is, you know, NetCast and the National Semiconductor Technology Center is a public private constium, as you said, and our job is to convene industry, government and academia to really strengthen semiconductor research and development in our country. Because, as you heard from two of the three prior conversations, semiconductors really fuel everything from data centers to cars to the cell phones you also talked about
is pretty remarkable. So we're trying to make sure that we have not only semiconductor leadership today, but that we have semiconductor R and D leadership into the future because that drives economic and national vitality. And the other thing that we're really going to be focused on is developing our semiconductor workforce in the United States.
Who are your members specifically.
Well, a great question. We just opened up membership this week, so it was pretty amazing because we opened up at midnight on Monday morning and someone within two hours registered to join. Talking about who's joined, but what we anticipate our membership will be as a very broad base of semiconductor stakeholders from big semiconductor firms like the ones you
mentioned previously. This hour also to startups in the semiconductor space community, colleges that are helping to develop technician programs for the manufacturing fabs that are being built in the country, you know, basically the whole ecosystem. Our founding members are Gnatcasts, the organization I'm responsible for, and the Department of Defense, Department of Energy, Department of Commerce, and National Science Foundation.
But what you will expect and you will see over the coming weeks and months, the entire industry will be joining us.
The entire US industry or the entire global industry.
Really good question. I think you know, we are charged. We are currently funded by the Department of Commerce under the Chips and Science Acts, so we're driving US economic vitality. But there's a lot of global firms with the significant US presence, so we would expect to have, you know, all those firms that have a large US presence to be part of the NSTC.
Well, I am curious.
You know, you mentioned the Chips Act and something that we've talked about a lot here at Bloomberg and the impact of it, and certainly the build out and the use of that money is just starting. Are you doing this in conjunction with that?
And because of that.
Great question, the Chips and Science Act really has multiple components to it. There is a incentive grant component where you're hearing about new fabs being built around the country like that. We've heard about TS and C is already producing chips for the Apple cell phone inside their fab in Arizona. So those are the government grants for manufacturing and really supply chain resilience. Another huge component of the Chips and Science Act is focused on research and development.
And then NSTC is really the centerpiece of that R and D Chips Act component.
What happens if President Trump wins the election in November and is he able to undo any of the steps that were put in place by the Biden administration to create this partnership.
So, first of all, when the Chips and Science Act passed back in August of twenty twenty two, there was broad bipartisan support for this initiative. And why is that Because semiconductors drive every aspect of our vital economy, and you have that in data centers and cell phones and
automobiles and so on and so on. So I'm fairly confident that regardless of who's leading on the hill in the House and the Senate, and who's sitting in the White House, that we will continue to enjoy broad based support for our initiatives.
I want to understand and forgive me because there's the Semiconductor Industry Association that's the voice of the semiconductor industry. You guys obviously have government components to so help me understand kind of what your role is. You know, at a time where people are looking at the so many different layers within the government, and you know how money is being used. What specifically is the role of n STC.
So, first of all, SIA semi Conductor Industry Association, they're a great organization. They're a trade organization. As you mentioned, our trade association made up of many leading semiconductor firms in the United States. A lot of their agenda is really to promote policy and so on. We're going to be driving semiconductor R and D leadership and we're going to do that in a number of ways. First of all,
we're going to be you know, commissioning research. We've already commissioned or in the process of commissioning some early research grants around important topics like AI driven ship design. We're going to be doing another research initiative kicking off next month around you know, mitigate of these forever chemicals that go into semiconductors. So a research agenda and driving research for the industry with the industry will be a key component.
Of our mission.
So, you know, Deirdre, is this kind of akin to DARPA what it does for defense or I think about some of the R and D that led to or helped lead to the COVID vaccine right before it kind of got out into the private sector. Is that how we should think about it?
And in se many connector companies do invest a tremendous amount in R and D. This is really bringing companies and industries and government and academia together to solve problems that are better solved together. And so a really great area, for instance, is things like research. You know, we have wonderful researchers in this country and they a lot of times they have to start from scratch when they're doing research work. So how can we create tools to help
them innovate faster? And that's going to be an advantage for the entire US economy.
What would you say is the biggest problem that you have to tackle and just got about twenty five seconds left.
Well, I think we're all excited about what's happening in data centers and what's happening in AI because it's really revolutionizing the industry. I think we need to be really careful about reducing power consumption and the sustainability of this transformative innovation in the United States. Yeah, it's something we have power consumption and power sustainability very cool. That's something certainly we talked about Climate Week here in New York City and talked about with some global leaders.
Deirdre, thank you so much.
Deirdre Hanford, che chief executive Officer at NATCAST, joining us from Santa Clara County, California.
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