The Nerds

I'm not prepared to claim that Eric Crampton and Benno Blaschke are the nerdiest of all the nerds involved with New Zealand's zoning reforms, but they are the only ones who happily self-identified as such on the air with me. Crampton is the chief economist and Blaschke a research fellow with the New Zealand Initiative, a Wellington-based think tank that is funded a bit like a Chamber of Commerce is in the United States: from dues payments from a wide variety of member businesses. I've described them as the American Enterprise Institute of New Zealand: both earnestly academic and ideologically aligned with the goal of freeing markets from overregulation. This makes them representatives of an important constituency in most successful YIMBY reforms in the United States: the "reasonable Republican" or pro-business conservative. In New Zealand, where the current right-of-center government controls the path of national zoning reform, this makes them particularly important. We had a rich conversation about the different ideologies that point to upzoning, about their hopes and predictions for the country's next round of pro-housing legislation, and about whether New Zealand's unusual form of government might have something to do with its unusual national land-use policy. Discussed: Crampton and Blaschke's own podcast interviews with public economist Chris Parker, with former housing minister Phil Twyford, and with current housing minister Chris Bishop. Sam Bowman's 2021 article "The Housing Theory of Everything," in Works in Progress magazine Blascke's then-upcoming report arguing for price-based accountability in land use instead of speculative housing targets.