The new Measure of the Local Regulatory Environment for Housing Markets by The Wharton School University of  Pennsylvania. this means that highly (lightly) regulated places tend to be highly (lightly) regulated on virtually all the dimensions by which we measure regulatory stringency. Thus, there is no evidence that communities target specific items or issues to regulate. The stringency of regulation also is strongly positively correlated with measures of community wealth, so that it is the richer and more highly-educated places that have the most highly regulated land use environments. However, the stringency of regulation is weakly negatively correlated with population density.