I’m hoping to post about France’s recent liberalization of zoning restrictions, although I haven’t yet familiarized myself with the legislation and restrictions. I also want to touch on how it may effect the character of Paris’ urban streets.

I like what you have to say on centralization and scale of organization, and would certainly hope to write on that and encourage you to.

Adam

I’m hoping to post about France’s recent liberalization of zoning restrictions, although I haven’t yet familiarized myself with the legislation and restrictions. I also want to touch on how it may effect the character of Paris’ urban streets.

I like what you have to say on centralization and scale of organization, and would certainly hope to write on that and encourage you to.

Adam

What you say about the market applies to a whole metropolitan area, and it is true that if zoning density was raised across the entire metropolitan area simultaneously, the unmet demand would be distributed evenly and gradually across it. But that is not possible so long as there is decentralization. Whoever moves first loses.

I applaud your efforts to reconcile the market with urbanism. My own personal perspective is that there is an enormous amount of confusion as to the place of government in cities. Cities are not governments but public enterprises, no different than the post office or the electric utility. As they get bigger, they become more and more capitalist, meaning by this that they must make increasingly capital-intensive investments. When you have a city like Paris that is made up of thousands of little enterprises (cooperative or communist in organization), it is impossible to solve problems at the scale of the whole city.

I’m not ready to write an article about this yet, but maybe you can.

What you say about the market applies to a whole metropolitan area, and it is true that if zoning density was raised across the entire metropolitan area simultaneously, the unmet demand would be distributed evenly and gradually across it. But that is not possible so long as there is decentralization. Whoever moves first loses.

I applaud your efforts to reconcile the market with urbanism. My own personal perspective is that there is an enormous amount of confusion as to the place of government in cities. Cities are not governments but public enterprises, no different than the post office or the electric utility. As they get bigger, they become more and more capitalist, meaning by this that they must make increasingly capital-intensive investments. When you have a city like Paris that is made up of thousands of little enterprises (cooperative or communist in organization), it is impossible to solve problems at the scale of the whole city.

I’m not ready to write an article about this yet, but maybe you can.

By the way, I think you might enjoy reading my comments to a thread on the subject of “high” density zoning on a webblog called, “2Blowhards.” (The most active proprietor of the weblog, “Michael Blowhard.” is somewhat market oriented and might enjoy being introduced to your weblog — so you might want to introduce yourself and your blog.) The thread is called “Urban Squeezing” and is from Feb. 19, 2008. If the following link doesn’t work, you can find it using the blog’s search feature, by typing in “zoning.”

I say, Michael “Blowhard” is “somewhat” market oriented because he seems to have succumbed to some of the planning rhetoric of the people I call “New [Sub-]Urbanists.” There were two or three recent (in August) threads on New [Sub-]Urbanism (and what I feel are the strong anti-market tendencies of some prominent New [Sub-]Urbanists (e.g., Christopher Alexander, Leon Krier, Roger Scruton and Nikos Salingaros).

1) Link to 2/19/08 thread, “Urban Squeezing”:

http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2008/02/urban_squeezing_1.html

2) Link to 8/15/08 thread, ” ‘Burb Thoughts, Info, Questions”:

http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2008/08/burb_thoughts_i.html

3) Link to 8/21/08 thread, “The Alexander Effect”:

http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2008/08/the_alexander_e.html