Thrilled to announce that my book NIMBY NATION: The War on Growth That Created Our Housing Crisis and Remade American Politics, is under contract with Bloomsbury and slated for publication in fall 2027. Please spread the news to anyone and everyone!

An underrecognized, yet persistent, lack of democratic accountability is shaping restrictions on housing development in communities around the country, @JakeAnbinder argues.

While planning in the Robert Moses era was famously unaccountable, we overlook the extent to which the system that replaced it now suffers from strikingly similar problems

In NYC voters will soon consider a series of ballot questions aimed at relieving their dire housing shortage—despite their City Council’s best efforts to deny them a voice, @JakeAnbinder, Klarman Fellow in @CornellHistory, writes in @TheAtlantic https://t.co/xVqse8a7b2

Now updated to reflect the (good!) outcome of today's Board of Elections meeting, my piece on the (still worrisome!) illiberal turn of NYC's NIMBYs

You say you’re winning by taking poor people’s food and healthcare away . . . You say you’re winning by destroying American farmers by taking 50% of their soybean purchases away this year (DOGE gutted USAID's 20% purchases that used to feed the world's hungry + China dropped 30%

update to update: not entirely unanimously

UPDATE: Board votes unanimously to keep the questions on the ballot!

Here is the livestream:

The NYC Board of Elections is meeting this afternoon to decide whether to block the city's housing referendum. Read my article on it from this morning:

An underrecognized, yet persistent, lack of democratic accountability is shaping restrictions on housing development in communities around the country, @JakeAnbinder argues.

"Member deference has no basis in law... But in every city where it is practiced, it yields the same result: a single point of failure in the development-approval pipeline that can negate broad public support for sorely needed new homes." @JakeAnbinder https://t.co/tII5SAqEOV

"New York’s growth machine has been replaced by an anti-growth machine—one that thrives on chronic voter disengagement.”

I am in @TheAtlantic today on the NYC Council's effort to kill the city's upcoming housing referendum

"A widely sought-after government privilege—control of land use—is now meted out in exchange for public alliances and private favors." @JakeAnbinder is making an important point here: https://t.co/fnP2mGME89

reposting for the morning crowd

The expectation that everyone have a view on everything—from Harvard University to random people on Twitter—and the assumption that the absence of a point of view must mean the person/thing necessarily disagrees with yours, is a disease unique to the social media age

I have little admiration for Garber since I know him best as the de facto head of Harvard's anti-grad-union campaign. That said, I think it is smart to start laying some ground rules about whether and when universities should put out statements about things in the future.

Our CIO @rob_haugen joined Schwab Network to talk markets. 'Growth at Any Price? Not Our Playbook.' How our ETF (NYSE: RVER) attempts to navigate current market dynamics. Why selective growth is key in the AI era. Why valuation matters. Where we see investors rotating next.

With a toddler in the house I now end up going to the grocery store nearly every day for one reason or another and I'm going to venture a guess and say Europeans don't actually enjoy this

It's not the sole determinant of electoral success but it seems important that the Dems are going into the election as both (a) the more unified party right now and (b) the party better positioned to pick up the types of voters who are disaffected with both candidates

At the risk of saying something so painfully obvious that it is barely worth noting, it's key to understanding the dynamics of this election that the Biden protest vote is coming from Biden's left, and the Trump protest vote is coming from Trump's left