For decades, urban policy has focused on troubled cities—those losing population and commercial activity. But in many cities, the era of decline is over; today, we are seeing the emergence of prosperous, economically dynamic cities, often located on America’s coasts. These “superstar cities”—New York, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston, Washington, and Seattle—are among America’s largest, most productive urban regions. They have well-above-average per-capita GDP and incomes and serve as the home bases of high-value sectors like finance (New York) and high tech (San Francisco). 
Despite their high incomes, these cities are growing slowly—or even, in the case of New York, shrinking—because of extremely high housing prices and overburdened infrastructure. In short, the superstars are suffering the problems of success, not failure. 
There are a number of reasons that these cities are unable to expand their housing supply and infrastructure:
Regulatory accretion and changes in social attitudes A loss of civic capacity to grow in the wake of an extended era of shrinkage—after decades of stagnation or decline, these cities are no longer organized to support growthA belief, on the part of ordinary current residents, that there are few significant marginal benefits to growth,  or that the negative effects of growth, such as rising congestion, outweigh any benefits America’s superstar cities need to think like high-growth cities again, or the national economy will lose access to high-productivity locations. Avoiding this outcome will require significant liberalization of land-use regimes to permit more and denser housing development near transit lines and areas with the most jobs, as well as expansion of the urban footprint on the suburban edge.
Because local resident perceptions militate against growth, states should consider preempting local land-use control in a targeted way that balances growth with other community goods. Even with preemption, local leaders need to clearly articulate and sell to their existing residents the benefits of becoming a larger city.
In addition, these regions need to develop credible plans to expand their infrastructure, particularly transit and airports, to support the significant new levels of growth that a liberalized land-regulation regime would enable. 

Scaling Up: How Superstar Cities Can Grow to New Heights PDF

The list of books you might like