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**Densely Speaking**

Densely Speaking: Conversations About Cities, Economics & Law

Latest Episodes:

S3E5 - Firms, Fires & Firebreaks: The Impact of the 1906 San Francisco Disaster on Business Agglomeration (James Siodla) Oct 23, 2023

Show notes

Firms, Fires, and Firebreaks: The Impact of the 1906 San Francisco Disaster on Business Agglomeration

James Siodla is an Associate Professor of Economics at Colby College. He is the author of Firms, fires, and firebreaks: The impact of the 1906 San Francisco disaster on business agglomeration. We also discuss related work by him: Clean slate: Land-use changes in San Francisco after the 1906 disaster and Razing San Francisco: The 1906 disaster as a natural experiment in urban redevelopment.

Extra Materials Discussed in this Episode: Sanborn Maps; The Limits of Power

Appendices: James Siodla: Disruptive Effects of Natural Disasters: The 1906 San Francisco Fire by Hanna Schwank and Destruction, Policy, and the Evolving Consequences of Washington, DC’s 1968 Civil Disturbance by Leah Brooks, Jonathan Rose, and Stan Veuger.

Greg Shill: Succession and History versus Expectations in the Spatial Economy: Lessons from Hiroshima by Kohei Takeda and Atsushi Yamagishi.

Jeff Lin: A Long History of a Short Block: Four Centuries of Development Surprises on a Single Stretch of a New York City Street by William Easterly, Laura Freschi, and Steven Pennings.

Producer: Courtney Campbell

The views expressed on the show are those of the participants, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, the Federal Reserve System, or any of the other institutions with which the hosts or guests are affiliated.

S3E4 - The Role of Private Law in Land Use Regulation (Molly Brady) Sep 22, 2023

Show notes

The Role of Private Law in Land Use Regulation (Molly Brady)

Molly Brady is the Louis D. Brandeis Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. She is the author of Turning Neighbors into Nuisances. Appendices: Molly Brady: Magic Mike’s Last Dance and This $5,750-a-Month Brooklyn Apartment Has a Smell Test. Greg Shill: the Culdesac development and its reported lease condition that residents not park within 400 meters of the development in Tempe, AZ. Local government law bonus: minutes of the Tempe Development Review Commission meeting discussing this. Jeff Lin: The Rise and Effects of Homeowners Associations, by Wyatt Clarke and Matthew Freedman. Follow us on the web or on Twitter: @denselyspeaking, @jeffrlin, @greg_shill, @mollyxbrady. Producer: Courtney Campbell The views expressed on the show are those of the participants, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, the Federal Reserve System, or any of the other institutions with which the hosts or guests are affiliated.

S3E3 - The Impact of WFH on Brick-and-Mortar Retail (Lindsay Relihan) Aug 21, 2023

Show notes

The Impact of WFH on Brick-and-Mortar Retail (Lindsay Relihan)

Lindsay Relihan is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. School of Business at Purdue University. She is the author of The Impact of Work-from-Home on Brick-and-Mortar Retail Establishments: Evidence from Card Transactions, with James Duguid, Bryan Kim, and Chris Wheat.

Appendices:

Lindsay Relihan: Cities and Covid, Thus Far by Gilles Duranton and Jessie Handbury, Silo Series, and The Mars Trilogy.

Greg Shill: Remote Work Sticks for All Kinds of Jobs, Wall Street Journal.

Jeff Lin: Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World by Henry Grabar.

Producer: Courtney Campbell

S3E2 - The Work-from-Home Technology Boon and Its Consequences (Andra Ghent) Jul 10, 2023

Show notes

The Work-from-Home Technology Boon and Its Consequences (Andra Ghent)

Andra Ghent is Professor of Finance at the University of Utah David Eccles School of Business. She is the author of The Work-from-Home Technology Boon and Its Consequences, with Morris A. Davis and Jesse Gregory.

Appendices: Andra Ghent: the miniseries Show Me a Hero and the book Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It by Nolan Gray. Also mentioned: Natalia Emanuel & Emma Harrington, Working Remotely? Selection, Treatment, and the Market for Remote Work and Emanuel, Harrington & Amanda Pallais, The Power of Proximity to Coworkers: Training for Tomorrow or Productivity Today?

Greg Shill: The Puzzle and Persistence of Biglaw Clustering (summarized in this blog post)

Jeff Lin: Growth in Cities, revisited

Follow us on the web or on Twitter: @denselyspeaking, @jeffrlin, @greg_shill. On Threads: Jeff is @jeffrlin and Greg is @just_shilling.

Producer: Courtney Campbell

S3E1 - Work From Home and the Office Real Estate Apocalypse (Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh) Jun 01, 2023

Show notes

Work From Home and the Office Real Estate Apocalypse (Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh)

Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh is the Earle W. Kazis and Benjamin Schore Professor of Real Estate and Professor of Finance at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business. He is the author of Work From Home and the Office Real Estate Apocalypse (joint with Arpit Gupta and Vrinda Mittal). Appendices:

Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh: The City in Transition: Prospects and Policies for New York by the Temporary Commission on City Finances, City of New York (1977). Greg Shill: Internet Appendix to today’s paper: Asset Pricing Model to Infer Expected Returns and Assortative Matching at the Top of the Distribution: Evidence from the World’s Most Exclusive Marriage Market by Marc Goñi. Jeff Lin: Looking Back to Look Forward: Learning from Philadelphia’s 350 Years of Urban Development by Joseph Gyourko, Robert Margo and Andrew Haughwout.

Follow us on the web or on Twitter: @denselyspeaking, @jeffrlin, @greg_shill, @SVNieuwerburgh. Producer: Courtney Campbell. The views expressed on the show are those of the participants, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, the Federal Reserve System, or any of the other institutions with which the hosts or guests are affiliated.

S2E11 - Special Series on History and Urban Economics - Part III Jul 05, 2022

Show notes

Special Series on History and Urban Economics - Part III

This episode is the third and final in a series based on a new special issue on Urban Economics and History in Regional Science and Urban Economics. It contains a series of short conversations with authors and concludes Season 2 of the show.

Today’s Guests:

Ed Glaeser is the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics and Chairman of the Department of Economics at Harvard University.

Leah Brooks is an Associate Professor at George Washington University’s Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration.

Ting Chen is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Hong Kong Baptist University.

David Nagy is a Junior Researcher at Centre de Recerca en Economia Internacional (CREI), an Adjunct Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), and a Barcelona School of Economics Affiliated Professor.

Yanos Zylberberg is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Bristol.

Jason Barr is a Professor of Economics at Rutgers University-Newark.

Papers Discussed in Today’s Episode:

What Can Developing Cities Today Learn from the Urban Past? by Ed Glaeser

What if You Build It and They Don’t Come? How the Ghost of Transit Past Haunts the Transit Present by Leah Brooks and Genevieve Denoeux

War Shocks, Migration, and Historical Spatial Development in China by Ting Chen and James Kung

Quantitative Economic Geography Meets History: Questions, Answers and Challenges by David Nagy

Urban Economics in a Historical Perspective: Recovering Data with Machine Learning by Pierre-Philippe Combes, Laurent Gobillon, and Yanos Zylberberg

Viewing Urban Spatial History from Tall Buildings by Gabriel Ahlfedlt and Jason Barr

Firms, Fires, and Firebreaks: The Impact of the 1906 San Francisco Disaster on Business Agglomeration by James Siodla

Hosts: Jeff Lin and Greg Shill.

Special thanks to our outgoing producer Schuyler Pals (Schuyler, you'll be greatly missed - thank you and good luck on the bar exam!)

Our theme music is by Oleksandr Koltsov. Sounds from Ambience, London Street by InspectorJ.

S2E10 - Special Series on History and Urban Economics - Part II May 23, 2022

Show notes

Special Series on History and Urban Economics - Part II

This episode is the second in a series based on a forthcoming special issue on Urban Economics and History, to be published in the journal Regional Science and Urban Economics. It contains a series of short conversations with multiple authors.

Guests:

Brian Beach is Assistant Professor of Economics at Vanderbilt University and Dan Bogart is Professor of Economics at the University of California Irvine.

Robert Margo is Professor of Economics at Boston University.

Alexander Whalley is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Calgary Haskayne School of Business.

Katherine Eriksson is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of California Davis and Allison Shertzer is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Pittsburgh.

Papers Discussed in Today’s Episode:

Water Infrastructure and Health in U.S. Cities by Brian Beach.

Infrastructure and Institutions: Lessons from History by Dan Bogart.

Industrialization and Urbanization in Nineteenth Century America by Jeremy Atack, Robert Margo, and Paul Rhode.

150 Years of the Geography of Innovation by Michael Andrews and Alexander Whalley.

Immigrants and Cities during the Age of Mass Migration by Katherine Eriksson and Zachary Ward.

Zoning and Segregation in Urban Economic History by Allison Shertzer, Tate Twinam, and Randy Walsh.

Hosts: Jeff Lin and Greg Shill.

Producer: Schuyler Pals.

Our theme music is by Oleksandr Koltsov. Sounds from Ambience, London Street by InspectorJ. The views expressed on the show are those of the participants, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, the Federal Reserve System, or any of the other institutions with which the hosts or guests are affiliated.

S2E9 - Special Series on History and Urban Economics - Part I May 02, 2022

Show notes

Special Series on History and Urban Economics - Part I

This episode is the first in a series based on a forthcoming special issue focused on Urban Economics and History, to be published in the journal Regional Science and Urban Economics. It contains a series of short conversations with multiple authors.

Guests:

Walker Hanlon is Associate Professor of Economics at Northwestern University and Stephan Heblich is Associate Professor and Munk Chair of Economics at the University of Toronto. Maarten Bosker is Professor of International Trade and Development at Erasmas University of Rotterdam. Noel Johnson is Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University. Treb Allen is Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College

Papers Discussed in this Episode:

History and Urban Economics by Walker Hanlon and Stephan Heblich

City Origins by Maarten Bosker

Medieval Cities Through the Lens of Urban Economics by Remie Jedwab, Noel Johnson, and Mark Koyoma

Persistance and Path Dependence: A Primer by Treb Allen and Dave Donaldson

What Future for History Dependence in Spatial Economics by Jeffrey Lin and Ferdinand Rauch

Hosts: Jeff Lin and Greg Shill.

Producer: Schuyler Pals.

Special theme music for this series: Oleksandr Koltsov Ambience, London Street, A by InspectorJ. The views expressed on the show are those of the participants, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, the Federal Reserve System, or any of the other institutions with which the hosts or guests are affiliated.

S2E8 - Evan Mast, Does Building New Apartments in Low-Income Areas Cause Displacement? Apr 11, 2022

Show notes

Evan Mast, Does Building New Apartments in Low-Income Areas Cause Displacement?

Evan Mast, Assistant Professor of Economics at Notre Dame, is our guest. The focus of the conversation is Evan's paper Local Effects of Large New Apartment Buildings in Low Income Areas (with Brian J. Asquith and Davin Reed).

Kate Pennington, Economist at the U.S. Census Bureau Center for Economic Studies, is our guest co-host. Check out Kate's working paper Does New Housing Cause Displacement?: The Supply and Demand Effects of Construction in San Francisco, which uses a different identfication strategy but reaches similar results.

Appendices:

Evan Mast: Proud Old, Stubborn Old Wicker Park by Robert Cross

Kate Pennington: The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration by Jake Bittle

Jeff Lin: Razing San Francisco: The 1906 Disaster as a Natural Experiment in Urban Redevelopment by James Siodla

Greg Shill: State and Local Government Blog posts Teaching Cities in “The City” by Clay Gillette and How Uncordinated Land Use and Transportation Laws Thwart Climate Response by Sara Bronin

Producer: Schuyler Pals.

S2E7 - Constitutional Law for NIMBYs? Mar 07, 2022

Show notes

Constitutional Law for NIMBYs?

The guests discuss the National League of Cities' Principles of Home Rule for the 21st Century, which two of them (Nestor Davidson and Richard Schragger) helped draft and the third (David Schleicher) has criticized as "Constitutional Law for NIMBYs."

Nestor Davison is the Walsh Professor of Real Estate, Land Use, and Property Law and the Faculty Director of the Urban Law Center at Fordham Law School. Richard Schragger is the Bowen Professor of Law and Karsh Bicentennial Professor of Law at UVA Law School. David Schleicher is Professor of Law at Yale Law School and host of the Digging a Hole podcast.

In addition to the National League of Cities' Principles of Home Rule for the 21st Century, the papers at the heart of the conversation are Do Local Governments Really Have Too Much Power? (by Nestor and Richard) and Constitutional Law for NIMBYs (by David).

Appendices:

Nestor Davison: City-Wide Effects of New Housing Supply: Evidence From Moving Chains by Cristina Bratu, Oskari Harjunen, and Tuukka Saarimaa Supply Shock Versus Demand Shock: The Local Effects of New Housing in Low-Income Areas by Brian Asquith, Evan Mast, and Davin Reed

Richard Schragger: The Last Black Man in San Francisco (movie)

David Schleicher: Survival of the City: Living and Thriving in an Age of Isolation by Edward Glaeser and David Cutler State Capture: How Conservative Activists, Big Businesses, and Wealthy Donors Reshaped the American States and the Nation by Alexander Hertel-Fernandez

Greg Shill: Sky-High Vaccination Rates and Zero Taxes Make Dubai a Pandemic Boom Town (in The Wall Street Journal)

Jeff Lin: I Changed My Mind About Rent Control by Jerusalem Demsas From Samurai to Skyscrapers: How Historical Lot Fragmentation Shapes Tokyo by Junichi Yamasaki, Kentaro Nakajima, and Kensuke Teshima

Follow us on the web or on Twitter: @denselyspeaking, @jeffrlin, @greg_shill, @davidson_nestor, @RichSchragger, and @ProfSchleich, and check out David's hit podcast (with Samuel Moyn) Digging a Hole: The Legal Theory Podcast.

Producer: Schuyler Pals.