Curriculum Urban Economics & Housing Policy
Urban Economics & Housing Policy
Why cities grow the way they do - zoning, transportation, gentrification, and the policy choices that shape where and how people can afford to live.
- Why Cities Exist: The Economics of Density The economic forces that pull people and businesses together into dense cities instead of spreading out evenly across the land. 📄 Read-aloud
- Zoning Laws and Why Housing Costs What It Does How local rules about what can be built where directly shape housing supply, and therefore housing prices. 📄 Read-aloud
- Gentrification: Winners, Losers and the Real Debate Why rising investment in a neighborhood creates real winners and real losers, and what the economic evidence actually shows about displacement. 📄 Read-aloud
- Rent Control: The Economic Tradeoffs What rent control actually does to renters, landlords, and the overall housing supply - and why economists tend to view it as a tradeoff rather than a clean fix. 📄 Read-aloud
- Public Transportation and Urban Growth How transit access shapes where people can afford to live, work, and reach jobs - and why transit and housing policy are deeply linked. 📄 Read-aloud
- Urban Economics & Housing Policy: Checkpoint 1 Covers why cities exist, zoning, gentrification, rent control, and public transportation's role in urban growth. 5 questions
- Suburban Sprawl and Its Hidden Costs Why low-density suburban growth looks cheap to an individual household but carries large hidden costs that show up elsewhere. 📄 Read-aloud
- Homelessness Through an Economic Lens What the strongest cross-city evidence says actually predicts homelessness rates - and why the answer is more specific than most assumptions about it. 📄 Read-aloud
- NIMBYism and the Politics of New Housing Why new housing is politically difficult to approve even where it's economically valuable, and the incentive structure behind that gap. 📄 Read-aloud
- How Property Taxes Shape City Budgets Why most local government spending runs on property taxes, and how that funding structure shapes decisions about zoning, growth, and development. 📄 Read-aloud
- Urban Economics & Housing Policy: Checkpoint 2 Covers suburban sprawl, homelessness through an economic lens, NIMBYism, and how property taxes shape city budgets. 5 questions
- The Economics of Eminent Domain and Urban Renewal Why governments can force a property sale for public projects, and the real economic tradeoffs that power creates. 📄 Read-aloud
- Congestion Pricing: Using Economics to Fix Traffic Why charging drivers to enter busy areas at peak times can reduce traffic more effectively than building new roads. 📄 Read-aloud
- The Economics of Historic Preservation and Land Use Why protecting historic buildings has real economic benefits and real economic costs, and how cities weigh the two. 📄 Read-aloud
- Agglomeration Economies: Why Talent Clusters Together Firms and skilled workers cluster in the same cities because being physically close to similar businesses makes everyone more productive. 📄 Read-aloud
- Land Value Tax: An Alternative to Property Tax Taxing only the value of land, not the buildings on it, is designed to fund public services without discouraging construction and improvement. 📄 Read-aloud
- Informal Settlements and the Economics of Slums Informal settlements form when formal housing and land systems fail to keep pace with urban growth, and they operate on their own surprisingly organized economic logic. 📄 Read-aloud
- Transit-Oriented Development Designing dense, walkable neighborhoods around transit stations aims to reduce car dependence while boosting ridership and local economic activity. 📄 Read-aloud
- India's Smart Cities Mission What India's Smart Cities Mission set out to do, how its projects were funded and chosen, and what it achieved. 📄 Read-aloud
- The Economics of Parking Why free or cheap parking is not really free, how parking requirements shape cities, and the case for pricing parking. 📄 Read-aloud
- How Indian Cities Pay for Themselves Where Indian city governments get their money, why they are among the weakest-funded in the world, and how they could raise more. 📄 Read-aloud
- Metro Rail in Indian Cities: Costs and Ridership How metro rail spread from Delhi to many Indian cities, why ridership often falls short of projections, and what makes metros succeed economically. 📄 Read-aloud