This New York Times Best Seller examines the reason for the lack of progress on ambitious projects in the US, including affordable housing, infrastructure, and climate change.  The authors argue that the regulatory environment in many liberal cities, while well intentioned, stymies development. They write that liberals have been more concerned with blocking bad economic development that promoting good development since the 1970s.  They say that Democrats have focused on the process rather than results and favored stasis over growth by backing zoning regulations, developing strict environmental laws, and tying expensive requirements to public infrastructure spending.

They propose an “abundance agenda” that they say better manages the tradeoffs between regulations and social advancement and lament that America is struck between a progressive movement that is too afraid of economic growth and a conservative movement that is allergic to government intervention.  They present the abundance agenda as a way to initiate new economic conditions that will diminish the appeal of the “socialist left” and the “populist authoritarian right.”

Ezra Klein is a columnist for the New York Times and Derek Thomas is a writier the The Atlantic.