In the comments of my most recent post, insightful commenter, OldUrbanism pointed out some items that need attention:
The last two factors, legal costs associated with eminent domain and opportunity costs of land, are in fact often included in typical project cost estimates for both public and private projects. The [...]
I probably won’t make any friends today, but now I’ve read one too many urbanist (many who’s ideas I usually respect) use unsound logic to support high speed rail. This argument often includes something like this: “…and furthermore, highways and airports don’t come close to paying for themselves, therefore high [...]
This 5th installment of the Rothbard Series dovetails well with the most recent post on segregation by guest blogger, Stephen Smith, as well as a post back in July over at Austin Contrarian.
If you haven’t kept up with our discussion, Murray Rothbard’s classic For A [...]
Discovering Urbanism has a nice post up about early 20th century urban planner Charles Mulford Robinson and his planning textbook, and it includes the following corrective to the notion that zoning originated as a way to separate polluting industry from places of residence and commerce:
There’s a [...]
Mathieu Helie at Emergent Urbanism posted a link to a interesting game created at the University of Minnesota. Mathieu explains it better than I can:
The game begins in the Stalinian Central Bureau of Traffic Control, where a wrinkly old man pulls you out of your job at the [...]
I apologize for the extended delay between posts. Personal (newborn) and professional priorities have prevented me from having the free time I once had. Unfortunately posts will probably continue to be sporadic until things settle down a little.
We are now at Part 4 in the multi-part series delving into the [...]
In the last post, we discussed the first paragraphs of chapter 11 of Murray Rothbard’s For A New Liberty. (available free from Mises.org as pdf, web page, and audio book) Those paragraphs discussed the private ownership of all land, including streets and roads. Rothbard clearly [...]
I added a few features to improve the reader experience:
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I started using twitter (in addition to linking on delicious) to share links to related articles. You can follow the Market Urbanism twitter feed here. I think I’ll eventually phase out the delicious feed, and use twitter exclusively.
2.
[...]
At Streetsblog, Ryan Avent presented a scorching attack on the most notorious free-market impostor – Randal O’Toole: Taking Liberties With the Facts for his consistent hypocrisy:
The Cato Institute’s Randal O’Toole gets under the skin of many of those interested in building a more rational and green metropolitan geography, [...]
The recent post, Public Education’s Role in Sprawl and Exclusion generated some interest and fantastic comments. I recommend reading Murray Rothbard’s For a New Liberty in its entirety. It is elegant in its consistently radical application of principles. It is available for free from the [...]
In his last two urbanism-related posts, Matthew Yglesias makes great points only to dissolve them in a vat of unrelated statements posed as conclusions. His logical inconsistency seems to invalidate his otherwise pretty good blogging on urbanism.
A couple days ago, Matthew blogged about regulation of neighborhood retail, quoting a [...]
While on the subject of Friedman, I’m happy to learn that Market Urbanism is on the blogroll at the new blog, Let A Thousand Nations Bloom, where Patri Friedman blogs with Johnathan Wolfe and Mike Gibson.
Related Posts:
May 20, 2009 — [...]
In a post blogger Eric Orozco called, ‘forerunner candidate for “most incisive blog post” of the year,’ Daniel Nairn of Discovering Urbanism discussed the seemingly conflicted camps of libertarianism when it comes to Urbanism. His observations are based upon the comments in the Volokh article on planning [...]
At Volokh, Ilya Somin discusses a recent piece in the American Prospect (also linked from here) that favors “New Urbanism” to prevent “unwalkable” sprawl. Somin favors “voting with your feet” as the preferred method of satisfying location preferences. Unfortunately, voting options have been whittled down through government [...]
The Orange County Register’s Freedom Politics website (check out my rent control article FreePo published in March) features articles discussing two differing takes on road privatization from notable scholars Walter Block and Robert Poole.
In Robert Poole’s article, he discusses the merits of the increasingly popular use [...]
I’ve been meaning to address the public education system’s complex role in land use patterns, and found that Murray Rothbard does a better job in his 1973 manifesto, For a New Libertythan I ever could. In summary, locally-funded public education is an engine of geographical segregation, [...]
Chris Bradford over at Austin Contrarian has been making some solid points in favor of congestion pricing. (here, here, here and here) Chris’s core argument in favor of congestion tolling is that:
congestion pricing does more than relieve congestion. Congestion pricing tells us when a road [...]
Sandy Ikeda posted an abstract for a short essay he is contributing to a Festschrift honoring Jane Jacobs. He quite eloquently describes the nature of the living city:
A city is not a man-made thing. Rather, it emerges from the actions of its inhabitants, who interact in unpredictable [...]
Mathieu Helie has been writing at a blog he calls Emergent Urbanism. His most recent post is the first part of a series that will be published as an entire article entitled “The Principles of Emergent Urbanism” at International Journal of Architectural Research.
This first part of [...]
(Map of Robert Moses’ unbuilt proposals via “vanshnookenraggen.”)
If Moses were around today I don’t think he’d waste any time getting every major project he could think of “shovel ready” for hundreds of billions of stimulus money. While he’s no longer with us, I [...]
Originally published at Freedom Politics:
In these days of economists constantly debating the right way to revive the economy, it seems like there is no way to find consensus among economists. Economists don’t spend much time debating the issues they agree on, and to them, rent control is about as [...]
Thomas Schmidt wrote a great article for LewRockwell.com that covers a lot of urbanist ground, with some help from a broad selection of Jane Jacobs’ work. Here’s a snippet:
Though you might blame any number of obvious villains and historical processes for this, the name Ebenezer Howard would probably not [...]
Some other things to ponder for the next time you are sitting on a congested highway…
When I talk to people about tolling roads, most people immediately reject the idea entirely. I like to ask them to think about it next time they are in a traffic jam. Hey, if you [...]
Over at Where, Dan Lorentz identified the top 5 books that he considers “the basics of urbanism”, as well as a “Tall Stack of Other Suggestions”:
Based on that library visit, on posted comments from readers, on behind-the-scenes advice from Where contributors and my interpretation—from my own very amateurish (and [...]
The Orange County Register’s new site, Freedom Politics just posted an article I wrote for them on rent control.
Here’s a snippet:
In these days of economists constantly debating the right way to revive the economy, it seems like there is no way to find consensus among economists. Economists [...]
Jim Powell’s latest article at Reason discusses the Tennessee Valley Authority, FDR’s most ambitious infrastructure program:
It was heralded as a program to build dams that would control floods, facilitate navigation, lift people out of poverty, and help America recover from the Great Depression. Yet the reality is that the [...]
From "Highway to hell revisited", a Financial Times article by Christopher Caldwell:
The Highway Act probably has more defenders than detractors. But Mr Obama should be among the latter. The act, which budgeted $25bn in federal money to build 41,000 miles of motorway, exacerbated the very problems Mr Obama has [...]
Most municipalities use the Floor Area Ratio (F.A.R.) metric to restrict development within their communities. F.A.R. is calculated by dividing the total floor area of a building by the area of the site it is built upon. In achieving planners’ and neighbors’ questionable objective of “preserving the character” of their [...]
Please don’t misread the title. Herbert Hoover is not a man I consider a “Legend” - quite the contrary. I use the words “Urbanism Legend” in the context of the series of posts intended to dispel popular myths as they relate to urbanism.
Myths and fallacies about Herbert Hoover [...]
I was heartened to see an article about the need for mass transit in the pages of The Nation, though I was severely disappointed by the magazine’s own hypocrisy and historical blindness. The article is in all ways a standard left-liberal screed against the car and [...]
Longtime reader, Dan M. wrote
Hey Adam,
I was on your site and saw that you posted a video about ant cities. ( I didn’t watch the vid yet, so my thought may or may not have anything to do with it)
It’s funny that you posted it because it sounds [...]
In an act of pure legislative idiocy in the face of overwhelming consensus among economists against rent control, the New York State Assembly started the ball rolling to strengthen rent regulation. NY Times:
The Democratic-led Assembly passed a broad package of legislation designed to restrain increases on rent-regulated [...]
Ants are a lot like humans in some ways. Look what ants can achieve without any top down management:
[hat tip: Cafe Hayek]
Related Posts:
June 30, 2008 — Journalists and Cities (0)
February 12, 2009 — Urban[ism] Legend: The [...]
An Illinois appellate court has struck down the city of Chicago’s landmarks ordinance, saying it is unconstitutionally vague, putting in jeopardy the city’s protection of more than 250 buildings and 50 historic districts.
Judge James Fitzgerald Smith of the three person Appellate Court wrote, “We believe that [...]
While most people associate cities with pollution and the material and ecological excess of late capitalism, I’ve long believed that urbanization has the potential to be a great environmental savior. The NYT has a fascinating article that confirms what I said about cities attracting people who [...]
I threw up Friday’s Redistribution post somewhat hastily during my break, but there isn’t much more that I haven’t said before. As a follow-up, I’d like to tie it in with some other interesting reads.
Ryan Avent at The Bellows agreed with Yglesias’ post and added:
Anyway, I saw in [...]
Discussing Ithaca, New York’s plan to increase permitted density and reduce parking minimums, I can dig what Matthew Yglesias says :
The distributive impact of parking minimums is to redistribute income from people who don’t own cars to people who do own cars—not to shift income from poor to [...]
Bill Hudnut at the Urban Land Institute wrote a post that attracted some attention at Austin Contrarian and Overhead Wire. Hudnut discusses a different approach to taxing land:
How about restructuring the property tax across America to install a two-tiered system? More tax on those horizontal pieces [...]
43 John Galt Way
27 Mises Street
I recently googled upon a post at a blog called “Rub-a-Dub” that mentioned a land development project in Mount Pleasant, SC called I’On.
I imagine the developers of the I’On “Traditional Neighborhood Development” [...]
Without getting too political on inauguration day, I’d like to share a positive video featuring our new President that urbanists should appreciate, regardless of political persuasion:
Let’s hope President Obama keeps Jane Jacobs’ lessons of spontaneous order from The Death and Life of Great American Cities in [...]
Yesterday I was listening to the pre-inaugural concert at the Lincoln Memorial on the radio, and one of the speakers said something that struck me as emblematic of the challenges that Barack Obama faces, though I doubt she realized the ironic significance. She was praising Theodore Roosevelt’s [...]
Apparently, IBM helped implement a congestion pricing solution in Stockholm, Sweden. Could commercials like this help break down aversion to market-based solutions?
[hat tip: The Overhead Wire]
Related Posts:
As Washington debates how many hundreds-of-billions of the nearly trillion-dollar stimulus will go towards infrastructure or to other spending/tax cut schemes, pundits claim that spending billions on “shovel ready” public works projects can effectively create jobs that will lead to recovery. As readers probably know, I am skeptical that [...]
Bart Frazier wrote a brief article for the Future of Freedom Foundation on private roads. He begins by discussing how most Americans remain strongly opposed to privately owned roads, while at the same time many have warmed to private education, medicine, and social security. This first part of the [...]
Brian Phillips at Live Oaks contacted me regarding the recent post by Stephen Smith on planning in Houston. Brian is a long time opponent of land use restrictions and defender of property rights in Houston. Brian has a different point of view on the subject, and has written [...]
Recently, I came accross an article by Charles Johnson, who blogs at Rad Geek. The article had linked to a Market Urbanism post about how user fees and gas taxes fall well short of funding road use in the US. Charles’ article further debunks the Urbanism Legend asserted by free-market [...]
It seems to be an article of faith among many land use commentators – both coming from the pro- and anti-planning positions – that Houston is a fundamentally unplanned city, and that whatever is built there is the manifest destiny of the free market in action. But [...]
This morning, as I stepped to the stairway that brings me into Brooklyn’s 86th street subway station on the R line, I was greeted by two MTA employees who handed me MTA’s ‘Rider Report Card’ to fill out and mail in. As I started down the steps, I noticed something [...]
Brendan Crain at Where tipped me off to a great post by Ryan Avent at The Bellows. Here’s a little snippet of Shortage:
For whatever reason, we’re not built to naturally internalize negative externalities. When riding on a crowded highway, no one (no non-economist, at any rate) curses the [...]
This post is part of an ongoing series featured on Market Urbanism called Urbanism Legends. The Urbanism Legends series is intended to expose many of the myths about development and Urban Economics. (it’s a play on the term: “Urban Legends” in case you didn’t catch that)
Last week [...]
The Weekly Standard has a comprehensive and compelling piece of investigative reporting on Columbia University’s attempt to acquire 17 acres in the heart of the Manhattanville section, north of its Morningside campus. The tale is a classic example of eminent domain abuse – the university worked [...]
Of course, Chicago is just privatizing the revenue from meters, not the actual parking spaces. Plus, the city will regulate rate increases, but it’s a step in the right direction. (right?)
For today’s politicians, this is a great way to get windfalls of money today for revenues of future generations [...]
by Sandy Ikeda
The other day I was lecturing to my students about externalities and the Coase Theorem. One of the examples I used came directly from the our textbook – Heyne, Boettke, & Prychitko’s The Economic Way of Thinking
While well intentioned, like many progressive interventions of the eary 1900s, zoning has contributed to sprawl (which has begun to be demonized by progressives over the recent decades) and served to inhibit the vitality and diversity of urban neighborhoods. The triumph of the core philosophy behind Euclid vs. Ambler [...]
I related to this particular post by Michael Lewyn at Planetizen, Why I fight:
Occasionally, someone familiar with my scholarship asks me: why do you care about walkability and sprawl and cities? Why is this cause more important to you than twenty other worthy causes you might be involved in?
The [...]
Market Urbanism readers may not have noticed, but not too long ago I added a feature to the sidebars labeled “Check these out.” This is a feed from the Market Urbanism del.icio.us bookmarks. I added this feature as a timesaving alternative to creating a new post every time [...]
Daniel Nairn at Discovering Urbanism brings up a great point about cul-de-sacs. Are they public goods, or truly unnecessary “socialism in its most extreme form”?
Take the standard cul-de-sac that serves a handful of households. The purpose of this design is to exclude the general public from passing through while [...]
Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution - Now is the Time for the Buffalo Commons:
The Federal Government owns more than half of Oregon, Utah, Nevada, Idaho and Alaska and it owns nearly half of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming. See the map for more. It is [...]
Congestion pricing schemes, touted as environmentally-responsible at the time of $4 gas, were defeated in New York City last Spring. However, as the market turmoil threatens to wreak havoc on tax revenues, fiscal necessity has lured New York State and New York City politicians to re-examine the [...]
Matt Yglesias is one of the best mainstream bloggers on land use/transportation that I know of. As one blogger (who I don’t recall right now) once said, his urban planning and transportation posts could be blogs in their own right. However, it’s puzzling that in an article [...]
New York State’s Assembly is now in Democratic control. On many legislators wish list is to end the vacancy decontrol provisions that allow landlords to remove a unit from rent control if a tenant moves out and the unit rents for more than $2,000 per month. (for those of you [...]
Reason Magazine, the Reason Foundation, and Cato are generally pretty okay libertarian standard-bearers, but they lose serious libertarian cred when it comes to land use. In those areas, they’ve been completely co-opted by hacks like Randal O’Toole, Wendell Cox, and Robert Poole, who take every opportunity to [...]
By Sandy Ikeda
Last week I spoke to a standing-room-only crowd of students and faculty about the current economic and financial turmoil. I shared the podium with three of my colleagues, who range all the way from far to the left of Barack Obama to very, very far to the [...]
When the New York Sun decided to shut down its press, the biggest loss to the blogosphere was Sanford Ikeda’s Culture of Congestion blog. At the Sun, Sandy blogged about cities, economics, politics, and related subjects.
Sandford Ikeda is an Associate Professor of Economics at SUNY Purchase. [...]
Hi, this is a test post to see if I have half a clue about how to do this. For example, even though I’ve been a “professional blogger” I still don’t know how to code URLs that I want to link to to words in the text.
Let’s see!
HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. [...]
In Market Urbanism’s four part series on rent control, I avoided the topic of the morality of rent control, as I intended to address the economic issues and leave the morality to others. Thankfully, J. Brian Phillips of the Ad Hoc Committee for Property Rights is [...]
Thanks to Bill Nelson for tipping me off to the article from The Villager (NYC): Retail rent control?
A city councilmember planned to introduce a bill this week that will require small businesses and landlords to submit to arbitration in negotiating lease renewals if both parties can’t agree on a [...]
Wow! This market is a mess.
As a great follow up to his posts at CafeHayek on government’s intervention in the housing market, Russell Roberts discusses the situation and bailout with reason.tv:
Also…
Here’s the video from an Economics forum discussion at MIT (my Alma mater) on Wednesday: The US [...]
Cook Co. sheriff won’t evict in foreclosures from Associated Press
Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart says he’s ordered his deputies to stop taking part in evictions of properties that have been foreclosed upon.
Dart says the change goes into effect Thursday. He says the decision comes because many of those being [...]
Ed Glaeser gives three compelling reasons why the government should end their infatuation with high housing prices. (Nonetheless, some of the same politicians speak through the other side of their mouths about promoting housing affordability):
Why We Should Let Housing Prices Keep Falling
There is a superficial attractiveness to policies [...]
The New York Sun has decided to close up shop. To Market Urbanists, the greatest casualties are Sandy Ikeda’s blog, Culture of Congestion and Ed Glaeser’s articles. Sandy’s work has inspired me to read Jane Jacobs’ books (starting with The Death and Life of Great American Cities[...]
Russell Roberts of George Mason University, CafeHayek, and Econtalk wrote of series of Cafe Hayek posts on the various federal interventions in the housing market:
Housing markets without the benefit of hindsight
Fannie reaches its goals–sort of
I’m visiting Portland, Oregon for 5 days through next weekend for a wedding. It’s my first time there and I hear it’s a great city. What are the must-does to get the genuine urban experience?
What are Portland’s specialty foods?
What neighborhoods should I make sure I visit?
Any new developments I need [...]
Thanks to Dan and Benjamin for separately tipping me off to this link:
AP: Cities rethink wisdom of 50s-era parking standards
Like nearly all U.S. cities, D.C. has requirements for off-street parking. Whenever anything new is built — be it a single-family home, an apartment building, a store or [...]
I guess I must not be hip enough to have known about this beforehand, but there’s a very interesting citywide event happening here in New York today called Park(ing) Day. All throughout New York City, people are reclaiming parking spaces for their street-side enjoyment. It’s a very novel idea [...]
In case you didn’t catch it last weekend, Eileen Norcross wrote an excellent piece on rent control in New York. She touches on Charlie Rangel’s four rent control apartments scandal, some history of rent control in New York, the destructive results of rent control, vast inefficiencies caused [...]
J. Brian Phillips wrote a great post at Houston Property Rights about liberal property rights in Houston, but what Brian had to say applies to every place. Here’s a snippet, but the entire post deserves a reading:
when developers and builders see a need for greater density, they respond accordingly. [...]
Shiller on Housing and Bubbles
Robert Shiller of Yale University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the current housing mess and related financial market problems. Shiller argues that the decade-long run up in housing prices was a bubble where speculative fervor outweighed any economic fundamentals. He also discusses the [...]
While I sympathize with the theme and agree with regards to roadway spending and “conservative” hypocrisy, a recent article in the progressive The American Prospect takes a narrow-minded view of politics and urbanism, while throwing around broad generalizations about evolution and global warming to support their assertions:
“]![DC SmartBike [flickr: TrishsWishs]](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3132/2759942149_b94a508b76.jpg?v=0)
My Other Bike is a Public Transportation System by Greg Beato at Reason.com:
A bike delivers a strong sense of autonomy, too—stronger even than a car in many ways. It doesn’t, for example, require a license, registration, insurance. You aren’t beholden to routes [...]
Market Urbanism was featured in Sandy Ikeda’s NY Sun blog “Culture of Congestion”: More Kindred Spirits: Mitchell Moss and “Market Urbanism” Blog. If you don’t already, I recommend subscribing to “Culture of Congestion”.
Thanks Sandy!
Related Posts:
During my early college studies in Architecture and Urban Design, I became loosely familiar with the ideas of Jane Jacobs, one of the most celebrated urbanist intellectuals. Sanford Ikeda’s FEE lectures [mp3] have inspired me to learn more about Jane Jacobs from a Free Market Urbanism point of [...]
Ever hear of interesting economic indicators such as the correlation beween the economy and length of skirts? Here’s one urbanists should appreciate: the skyscraper index, which shows strong correlation between the completion of world’s tallest buildings and downturns in the business cycle. Mark Thornton discusses the skyscraper index in [...]
For quite some time, Economist Walter Block has been one of the more radical thinkers when it comes to advocating free market solutions. Many of his writings on roads and rent control are featured in the Links to Articles, Academic Papers and Books page.
Today’s Lew Rockwell Podcast [...]
I’m a little slow picking up on this one, but the Wall Street Journal recently interviewed Harvard Urban Economist, Ed Glaeser. Here are some excerpts from State of the City:
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: What effect will higher gasoline prices have on urban planning in the U.S.?
MR. GLAESER: I would [...]
NIMBYism is the biggest obstacle to the evolution of vibrant urban communities, but the incentives for some to use public forums to impose restrictions on neighboring properties are great. Local politicians often bow to the most vocal residents, often with minority opinions, to avoid making waves, but their impositions are [...]
I’ve been swamped in my day job, but want to share the following:
The blog, Agents of Urbanism recently gave praise to Market Urbanism. Thanks Matthew! Please check out Agents of Urbanism and Life Without Buildings, which followed up on Agent of Urbanism’s praise. I enjoy both blogs.
Carl [...]
No doubt, mass production of the automobile is one of the greatest innovations of all times. It has allowed for increased mobility of goods and people, which has greatly improved productivity and leisure. But, is subsidizing mobility at the expense of taxpayers taking things too far?
In various blogs and forums, [...]
Don Boudreaux to the Washington Times:
LETTER TO EDITOR: Roads don’t need new taxes
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Upset that Virginians’ taxes were not recently raised to construct more roads, State Delegate Brian J. Moran, Alexandria and Fairfax Democrat, declares that “Government has an important role to play in strengthening our infrastructure, [...]
Matthew Yglesias - Straight Talk on Gasoline on drilling and how conservative deviation from free-market principles has hurt the environment:
Meanwhile, take something like the accessory dwellings issue. Here you have a bunch of regulations that make it illegal for people to live more densely. Illegal, in other [...]
I enjoyed this short video that compares Chicago’s Lincoln Square, where I have lived and Buffalo Grove, which is a suburb similar to where I grew up.
The video was produced by CEOs for Cities, a Chicago based organization that advocates for cities. Their website gives this description:
A new analysis [...]
This is a topic I want to cover more thoroughly, but for now I present a one hour documentary video on green buildings for you leisurely viewing.
I came across the snagfilms website from a recent Wall Street Journal article. Most of the documentary videos lean towards “progressive” tastes, but [...]
A recent Wall Street Journal blog post refers to a website called Walk Score. Walk Score will let you know the walkability of a neighborhood based on the address you type in. The site also features ranking of cities and neighborhoods.
Here are the city rankings:
1. San Francisco, [...]
Cuba reforms turn to state land
Cuba is to put more state-controlled farm land into private hands, in a move to increase the island’s lagging food production.
Private farmers who do well will be able to increase their holdings by up to 99 acres (40 hectares) for a 10-year period [...]
That is, he argues that private property should be subject to government planning restrictions if a developer building densely on its property creates a traffic burden on government roads.
Wooten points out that any solution to Atlanta’s traffic congestion has to focus on roads, not transit or land use. In [...]
