Urban growth controls with resident landowners

This paper develops a growth-control model that is more realistic than those available in the literature, by replacing the usual class of absentee landowners by resident landowners, who live within the city. The analysis shows that resident landowners have a weaker taste for growth controls than their absentee counterparts. The reason is that, since the resident landowners pay rent to themselves, a control-induced escalation of rent for the land they occupy confers no benefits. Absentee landowners, by contrast, gain from rent increases throughout the city, so favor more stringent controls. The model is generalized in a number of directions.