Analyzing the relationship between land use regulation, housing affordability, and residential segregation using published frameworks from leading housing economists.
Trellison Institute applies analytical frameworks published by researchers at Harvard (Edward Glaeser), Wharton (Joseph Gyourko), Brookings Institution (Jonathan Rothwell), and the Urban Institute. Trellison Institute has not contacted these researchers or institutions and does not claim endorsement or affiliation. We apply their published methods because they represent the most rigorous publicly available frameworks for studying the intersection of zoning, housing affordability, and segregation. We evaluate methodology, not policy positions. Negative results are results.
Exclusionary zoning, housing affordability, and residential segregation are among the most consequential and data-rich policy questions in the United States. Researchers studying these questions contend with fragmented data across thousands of local jurisdictions, inconsistent zoning classification systems, and the challenge of linking land use regulation to economic and demographic outcomes.
Trellison applies published analytical frameworks from leading housing economists to publicly available data, providing researchers with structured pipelines for studying how zoning regulations affect housing costs, racial segregation, economic mobility, and community development.
See also: Housing Crisis 2008 — our data story examining the origins and aftermath of the housing crisis.
Zoning restrictiveness analysis — structured data for comparing land use regulation across jurisdictions using the Wharton index framework, linked to housing outcome data.
Segregation impact modeling — pipelines for measuring how zoning changes affect residential segregation indices over time, using Rothwell-Massey and dissimilarity index methods.
Affordability gap research — tools for calculating the construction cost vs. market price gap at the metropolitan level, identifying where regulatory barriers drive the wedge.
Displacement and eviction analysis — county-level datasets linking eviction rates to zoning changes, housing supply, demographic shifts, and economic indicators.
This service is free for housing researchers, urban planners, and policy analysts whose methodology passes Trellison's evaluation criteria. We provide the data infrastructure and analytical frameworks. Researchers provide the expertise and the questions. We do not advocate for specific zoning policies — we measure what the data shows about the relationship between regulation, affordability, and segregation.
If you are a researcher studying housing policy, zoning regulation, residential segregation, or urban economics, request access to our housing data pipeline.
Request Access →The DaedArch Ecosystem