Joseph Lawler is policy editor at the Washington Examiner.
In The New Atlantis
Essay | Summer 2026
The qualities that make built places charming are best stewarded by people who live there. But America’s soul-crushing suburban districts are now owned by people far away — people who don’t even know they’re owners at all.
Essay | Spring 2026
America’s neighborhoods were once beautiful, unique, dense, and scaled for a communal life on foot. But obscure federal rules piling up over a century have made it nearly impossible for banks to finance new ones.
Essay | Winter 2026
The planners dreamed of gleaming cities. Instead they brought three generations of hollowed-out downtowns and flight to the suburbs.
Essay | Summer 2025
U.S. housing policy claims to promote homeownership. Instead, it encourages high prices, sprawl, and NIMBYism.
Massachusetts is one of the richest states in the country — because it’s pricing out its own middle class. Why did the state stop building enough to house them?
Interview | Summer 2024
Why “induced demand” is a tough nut to crack — and whether Texas’s capital city is destined to sprawl
Essay | Spring 2024
Austin’s interstate expansion becomes a test case for “induced demand” — and the culture war over faster traffic versus denser cities.