Zoning Laws Past and Present

In the past I've linked to interesting material on community and regional economics that I found interesting. I'm not a community/regional economist but regulation (a subject I'm very interested in) is often discussed in regional economics analyses.

This article from the NY Times is one such example. The article discusses the various zoning regulations currently in place that would effectively prohibit the construction of 40% of the existing buildings in Manhattan, NY today. The article does a great job of explaining the various regulations and mapping out where the violations of each type exist in the city. Working on the (perhaps incorrect) assumption that agglomeration is a "good thing," it makes me wonder just how much economic growth New Yorkers are missing out on due to current regulations. We'll never know.