Profiling the "Abundance" housing bottleneck with real data
The author analyzes housing policy by comparing Austin and San Francisco, arguing that regulatory 'valves' create artificial scarcity. The piece suggests that excessive bureaucratic processes act as technical debt, hindering housing throughput despite available resources.
Why it matters
It highlights the impact of local zoning and regulatory frameworks on the national housing crisis, offering a data-driven perspective on urban development.
My book club is reading Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson this month. The core idea fits on a napkin, so before the meeting I decided to actually check it against real data. Here's what I found, and where it fell apart.
Housing, clean energy, cures for disease. The inputs to all three haven't really moved. Money's there. Technology got cheaper, not more expensive. Roughly the same number of people know how to build this stuff as always did.
What changed is the pipe between the inputs and the output.
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