Perspectives or Misperceptions? Why Better Land-Use Data Are Critical to Housing Policy Debates.

The article critically examines the reliability and validity of planner survey responses used in land-use regulation research, which often links regulatory stringency to low housing supply, high costs, and segregation. By comparing responses from three major surveys—the Terner Center for Housing Innovation's Land Use Survey, the Wharton Residential Land Use Regulatory Index, and the National Longitudinal Land Use Survey—to objective data from 28 California jurisdictions, the authors find systematic response errors where planners tend to underestimate local regulatory stringency and overestimate state law impacts. These biases, along with ambiguous or invalid survey questions, raise concerns about the accuracy of survey-based measures of land-use regulation and their use in informing housing policy reforms. The authors recommend that scholars incorporate objective data sources, such as zoning maps and government records, and advocate for improved land-use data reporting and management to enhance the precision and usefulness of research guiding policy debates.