Zoning changes to increase urban density is an exercise in uncompensated governmental takings

From The Distaste for Housing Density by Joseph Gyourko & Sean E. McCulloch.  From the Abstract.

We characterize the distribution of suburban homeowners’ preferences for housing unit density. To measure welfare changes under counterfactual increases in density, we first construct a novel house-level measure of exposure to density and identify its price effects in a boundary discontinuity design. On the borders of municipalities with larger minimum lot sizes, lots are 3,000 ft² larger and houses are $40,000 costlier. We exploit the systematic variation in density exposure induced by these discontinuities to estimate price effects. We then connect these estimates to a structural hedonic model of housing choice to retrieve individuals’ preferences for density. Overall, we find an average welfare loss among incumbent homeowners from a 1/2 unit per acre increase in density (which is equivalent to a 0.3 standard deviation in density) of about $9,500, with significantly larger losses under counterfactual increases solely from rental units. There is other noteworthy heterogeneity in these preferences, too. Most households have only a moderate preference over density. The median welfare loss is only 55% of the average, implying a long, left tail of those with more extreme aversions to density. This tail disproportionately contains households in affluent, low density neighborhoods. In sum, our results document an important foundation of the demand for density regulation across U.S. suburbs that we hope serves as a valuable input into future research into the considerable costs of that policy.

Over the years I have come increasingly to the view that zoning changes to increase density are a form of uncompensated governmental taking.  There might be electoral support for such a change.  There might be good reasons for such a policy.  Those are separate issues.

Even if it is believed to be a good policy and even if the majority of the electorate supports the idea, it is still a taking and almost always an uncompensated taking.  This study seems to lend some credence to that view.