I’m pretty pessimistic on sorting out the housing supply/land use regulatory mess that, in conjunction with population pressures, has given us – Auckland in particular – extremely high house prices (and price to income ratios). There are no great technical barriers to getting the market working again, with housing as affordable as it used to be. But I have repeatedly noted here that I’m not aware of any country/region/locality that had once got into such a mess and had found its way back again, unwinding the morass of regulation (tell me again how many pages there are in the draft Unitary Plan). Each time I make the point, I really hope someone is going to tell me about a compelling counter-example, demonstrating that what it technically possible has also proved politically feasible.
But reading Tyler Cowen’s Marginal Revolution blog just now I found a really encouraging piece headed Laissez-faire in Toyko…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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