The History of the Future: Build, Baby, Build on Historic Preservation

Bryan Caplan

Historic preservation is one of the most crowd‐​pleasing rationales for preventing development. Critics often ridicule the rationale’s abuse. New York has an historic parking lot, and so does Washington, DC. Rarely, however, does anyone challenge the principle of historic preservation. My new Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation does precisely that.

I first decided to address historic preservation while reading Triumph of the City by Ed Glaeser...