It is now pretty well-recognised that local authority zoning decisions can materially affect land values, creating an artificial scarcity in developable land and driving up the price of such land relative to the price land would otherwise command for alternative uses. The best-known empirical study on this effect around Auckland (and the metropolitan urban limit in particular) was by Grimes and Aitken, summarised as follows:
We capture the impact of the MUL boundary on land prices by separately allowing for land which is: (i) well inside the MUL boundary,(ii) just within the boundary, (iii) sitting astride the boundary, (iv) sitting just outside the boundary, (v) sitting just a little further beyond the boundary, and (vi) sitting well beyond the boundary. We find a boundary land value ratio of between 7.9 and 13.2 (i.e. land just inside the MUL is worth around ten times more per hectare than land just…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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