Articles & Studies:

Reading is fundamental! Dig into articles and studies about the impact of blanket de-zoning, and the impacts it’s had on other cities:

📰 "Minneapolis's residential upzoning risks unintended consequences: Alissa Luepke Pier." The Planning Report: Insider’s Guide to Planning and Infrastructure, June 2019.

📰 Becker, Carol. "The failure of the Minneapolis 2040 plan to boost housing." MinnPost, Feb 19 2025.

📰 Florida, Richard. “Does Upzoning Boost the Housing Supply and Lower Prices? Maybe Not.” Bloomberg CityLab, Jan 31, 2019.

📰 Freemark, Yonah, “Upzoning Chicago: impacts of a zoning reform on property values and housing construction.” Urban Affairs Review, 2019.

📄 Freemark, Yonah. “Zoning change: upzonings, downzonings, and their impacts on residential construction, housing costs, and neighborhood demographics.” Urban Institute, Apr 5, 2023.

📰 Friedrich, Michael. “More building won’t make housing affordable.” The New Republic, Feb 9 2023.

📰 Friedrich, Michael. “The case against YIMBYism.” The New Republic, Mar 15 2024.

📰 Fryer, Alex. “More concrete, less green: a cautionary tale about upzoning from South Park.” The Seattle Times, Jan 24, 2025.

📄 McDonald, Patrick. “Trickle-Down Housing is a Failure. Here’s What You Need to Know.” Housing Is a Human Right, May 25, 2021.

📰 Meronek, Toshio. “YIMBYs Exposed: The Techies Hawking Free Market “Solutions” to the Nation’s Housing Crisis.” In These Times, May/June 2018.

📄 Schuyler, Louie, John Mondragon & Johannes Weiland. “Supply constraints do not explain house price and quantity growth across U.S. cities.” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 33576, March 2025.

📰 Stacy, Christina Pierhoples, C. Davis, et al. “Land-use reforms and housing costs: does allowing for increased density lead to greater affordability?” Urban Institute, Mar 29, 2023.

📄 Storper, Michael and Andrés Rodriguez-Pose. “We cannot build our way out of inequality.” VoxEU/Centre for Economic Policy Research, Oct 2 2019.

📄 Kirk McClure & Alex Schwartz (2025) Where Is the Housing Shortage?, Housing Policy Debate, 35:1, 49-63, DOI: 10.1080/10511482.2024.2334011

Official Resources & More Things to Read:

The following are essential resources that need to be considered for any comprehensive plan. SEMCOG’s data is required by law for regional transit planning, and in 2024 the City of Ann Arbor took a $45,000 grant from SEMCOG’s Planning Assistance Program while developing our own transit plans.

Additionally, the Michigan Statewide Housing Plan has offered numerous incentives since 2022 for municipalities end the housing crisis. A key tenant of the Statewide Housing Plan is affordable housing and ending homelessness.

In 2024 the State Plan achieved $1.2B in housing production investment, more than ever before. Construction and rehabilitation of 44,303 housing units meant crossing the half-way milestone towards 75,000-unit five-year goal. Key data and analysis in Ann Arbor’s draft comprehensive plan stops at 2022 - before the State Housing Plan ramped up… 🤔