Reason.org’s Staley Not in Favor of Property Rights if…
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 a more interesting twist, he takes local policy makers to task for approving higher density zoning without making the commitment to improving the road network to support it.
Hmmm… Interesting point of view from a so called free-market organization that claims to support individual property rights over government planning. I think I’ll remove them from the blogroll. click, click, done
Add Staley to the list of Free-Market Impostors.
Both Reason Foundation and Reason Magazine have a serious blindspot when it comes to transportation and land use. I don’t recall having ever read a single article about zoning in Reason, despite the fact that it’s probably my favorite site on the internet and I read their articles and blog posts religiously. The closest they get is decrying eminent domain. This probably has something to do with the fact that Robert Poole, highway whore extraordinaire, founded Reason Foundation.
(Note: I’m exaggerating a little – do a Google search with the string “zoning site:reason.com” and you’ll find a couple articles, but they’re pretty infrequent and just scratch the surface – for all Ron Bailey’s reporting on global warming and the debates on the response, you’d think SOMEWHERE he’d have brought up the fact that liberalizing land use would sure help. One of my first blog posts was about this.)
I agree. The blindspot you mention is why I thought this blog was needed.
also, I submitted this one on reddit’s libertarian page. So if you want to help spread the word, please visit here:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/info/6sfp1/