Abstract
Focusing on multifamily land use, this note discusses the hypothesis that zoning policies in a community are related to the zoning policies of surrounding communities. A community may restrict certain types of land use to preserve its neighborhood quality. As a result surrounding communities may adopt similar policies to prevent an influx that would reduce neighborhood quality. Empirically, a model is formulated to test whether the amount of multifamily development in a community is related to the amount of multifamily land use in surrounding communities. Other variables control for the effects of market forces, fiscal factors, and other effects. The empirical results are consistent with the hypothesis.
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