The Unfinished Metropolis: Igniting the City-Building Revolution
Why American cities have stopped being able to build, and what would have to change to reverse it.
Benjamin Schneider looks at urban transformation in the largest American cities and asks what blocks it: permitting, review processes, local veto points, and the politics that keep projects from ever starting. His argument is that city-building is a capacity a country can lose, and that the obstacles are procedural rather than technical.
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Tyler Cowen
Benjamin Schneider, The Unfinished Metropolis: Igniting the City-Building Revolution. How do we make urban transformation succeed in America’s largest and most important cities? What are the main obstacles to such success? Schneider calls for resurrecting the “lost art of city-building” to achieve abundant housing, good public transit, and streets for people instead of cars.
Source · October 2025
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