The government is getting out of the business of decided what kind of housing can be built where. Let the market decide.
Too bad the subtitle debunks the "deregulation" intention:
"Minneapolis’s answer to rising prices is meant to foster density and racial equity."
Actually, I think both points-of-view have some validity.
All zoning ordinances are a form of central planning.* As long as they remain in place, the governmental entity that enacts them is making authoritative decisions about how the privately-owned land within its boundaries may be used. Making the zoning rules less restrictive in certain areas of a city, as Minneapolis, Minnesota, is doing, increases the influence of market forces in those locations. However, the city's decision was driven by policy considerations: to make housing more affordable for young people and ethnic minorities who were effectively precluded from moving into certain "single-family" residential neighborhoods by the price of land.
Whether the policy will have its intended effect is an open question. Areas currently zoned for single-family homes in Minneapolis are composed of parcels of land that can only accommodate small two- or three-family buildings. This change in the zoning rules may not provide sufficient economic incentive for developers to purchase those parcels and invest in the construction of small multi-family residences.
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*For those unfamiliar with U.S. land use practices, the individual states typically delegate to their governmental subdivisions (counties, cities, towns, etc.) the authority to enact land-use regimes, typically called "zoning ordinances," which regulate the way parcels of land within their boundaries can be used. The categories vary, but may include single-family residences, multi-family residences, high-density residences (i.e., large buildings containing many apartments or flats), office buildings, retail buildings, and various combinations of different categories. These regulations often are designed to preserve the ambience of residential neighborhoods, which arguably is a good thing because it insulates the people who live in those places from what may be unwelcome change, but they also restrict what can be done with a property if its owner decides to sell it, which arguably is a bad thing because it reduces that value of the land and, therefore, the selling price.