UCLA Housing Voice

Last time we talked about what preapproved building plans are and how the existing U.S. programs are going. This time we talked with Alkarim Devani and Eric Kronberg, two practitioners who are designing and implementing preapproved plan programs across North America.
Read about the Lewis Center's work at lewis.ucla.edu.
Follow our Substack at uclahousingvoice.substack.com.
Email Shane at at shanephillips@ucla.edu and follow him on Bluesky and LinkedIn.
Show notes:
Alkarim’s company, mddl.
Eric’s companies, Kronberg Urbanists + Architects and Inc Codes.
The Incremental Development Alliance.

Preapproved plan programs promise to speed up permitting and lower the cost of building new homes. How do they work—and are they working? Seva Rodnyansky shares findings from a review of more than 40 existing programs.
Read about the Lewis Center's work at lewis.ucla.edu.
Follow our Substack at uclahousingvoice.substack.com.
Email Shane at at shanephillips@ucla.edu and follow him on Bluesky and LinkedIn.
Show notes:
Rodnyansky, S., & Su, D. (2026). Preapproved Building Plans Help Cities Improve Housing Affordability. Pew Charitable Trusts.
Animated intro for The Irony of Fate, which depicts architects having their building designs rendered increasingly bland and uniform by Soviet bureaucrats.
The pattern book for New South Wales, Australia, with plans for buildings up to 216 units!
The province-specific housing catalog produced by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

Why is exclusionary zoning, which restricts land to expensive single-family houses, so commonplace in the US compared to other countries? Alexander Sahn shares strong evidence that local responses to a wave of migration by Southern Blacks in the middle of the 20th century played a big role.
Read about the Lewis Center's work at lewis.ucla.edu.
Follow our Substack at uclahousingvoice.substack.com.
Email Shane at at shanephillips@ucla.edu and follow him on Bluesky and LinkedIn.
Show notes:
Sahn, A. (2025). Racial diversity and exclusionary zoning: Evidence from the Great Migration. The Journal of Politics, 87(4), 1302-1318.
Boustan, L. P. (2007). Black migration, white flight: the effect of black migration on northern cities and labor markets. The Journal of Economic History, 67(2), 484-488.
Derenoncourt, E. (2022). Can you move to opportunity? Evidence from the Great Migration. American Economic Review, 112(2), 369-408.
Grant, K. N. (2014). Relocation and Realignment: How the Great Migration Changed the Face of the Democratic Party. Syracuse University.
Cui, T. (2024). Did race fence off the American city? The great migration and the evolution of exclusionary zoning [working paper].
Gallagher, R., Shertzer, A., & Twinam, T. (2026). Zoning and the American Suburb (No. 26-37). Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
Lens, M. C. (2024). Where the hood at?: Fifty years of change in black neighborhoods. Russell Sage Foundation.
Episode 23 of UCLA Housing Voice, on political representation and housing supply with Michael Hankinson.

This episode features clips from a few episodes of Michael Andersen's one-shot podcast series, YIMBY Country: "A podcast mini-series about what happens after you legalize housing. In this case, in New Zealand."
Read about the Lewis Center's work at lewis.ucla.edu.
Follow our Substack at uclahousingvoice.substack.com.
Email Shane at at shanephillips@ucla.edu and follow him on Bluesky and LinkedIn.
Show notes:
Listen to YIMBY Country on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Episode 45 of UCLA Housing Voice: What Happened When Auckland Upzoned Everywhere with Ryan Greenaway-McGrevy.
Episode 81 of UCLA Housing Voice: How New Zealand Passed Its Ambitious Zoning Reforms with Eleanor West. 
Part 1 of the New Zealand Initiative's three-part series.

When cities adopt exclusionary zoning, their housing stock becomes scarcer and less affordable over time. Matt Mleczko shares research suggesting that the impacts extend beyond exclusionary jurisdictions’ borders, hurting poor communities that have no say over their neighbors’ land use policies.
Read about the Lewis Center's work at lewis.ucla.edu.
Follow our Substack at uclahousingvoice.substack.com.
Email Shane at at shanephillips@ucla.edu and follow him on Bluesky and LinkedIn.
Show notes:
Mleczko, M. (2026). The Cumulative Exposure to Exclusionary Zoning in Impoverished Neighborhoods. Demography, 63(1), 213-239.
The National Zoning and Land Use Database.
Jones, P. (2010). The Selma of the North: Civil Rights Insurgency in Milwaukee. Harvard University Press.
Wikipedia page on ‘Sewer Socialism,’ a movement that started in Milwaukee.
Perry, E. M. (2017). Live and Let Live: Diversity, Conflict, and Community in an Integrated Neighborhood. University of North Carolina Press.
Fischel, W. A. (2015). Zoning Rules! The Economics of Land Use Regulation. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. 
Goetz, E. G., Damiano, A., & Williams, R. A. (2019). Racially concentrated areas of affluence. Cityscape, 21(1), 99-124.
Taylor, K. (2019). Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership. University of North Carolina Press.
Connolly, B., & Kazis, N. (2026). Rezoning the Rust Belt [working paper]. SSRN.