Land as airspace: How rezoning privatizes public space (and why governments should not give it away for free)

Abstract

A popular but contested view is that mass rezoning is an essential policy measure to address housing affordability. Often obscured in debates about this measure is that rezoning involves the privatization of public space. We clarify the nature of the policy by recognizing that property rights over land are, conceptually, a bundle of socially negotiated rights to parcels of airspace. This view shows that rezoning to provide rights to airspace for existing landowners is not costless. It involves transferring valuable property rights from the public to existing private landowners for free, creating a more unequal distribution of property rights ownership without necessarily generating faster housing development. We argue that giving away public rights to airspace should not be done for free and explore what policy measures retain value from residential rezoning for the public.