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By Stephen Smith, on December 28th, 2010
Inclusionary zoning is a hot item among urban planners today, and is often seen as a solution to residential segregation and high housing costs. Exact implementations vary, but the general idea is that developers of multiunit housing projects are encouraged to set aside a certain percentage of their units, generally raging from 10-30%, [...]
By Stephen Smith, on December 27th, 2010
The NYT has an interesting article on urban planning developments in Aleppo, Syria (the largest city in the Levant – bigger than Beirut, Tel Aviv, Damascus, and Amman!), which includes this section about the history of planning in the Middle East, with a development-as-preservation lesson at the end:
The role of postwar urban [...]
By Stephen Smith, on December 26th, 2010
One of many reasons why high-speed rail in America is doomed, from Systemic Failure:
When DB or Renfe or even SNCF needs to buy a high-speed train, they simply call up Siemens (or Alstom or Talgo) and order some trains. Simple as that. Customization consists of painting a logo on the outside, and [...]
By Stephen Smith, on December 24th, 2010
It’s pretty amusing to me that liberals today are still whining about being called “socialists,” considering the charge is at least a century old. Here one example from Robert Fogelson’s excellent Downtown chapter on height restrictions around the turn of the century:
The Post voiced especially strong objections to the argument that a [...]
By Stephen Smith, on December 24th, 2010
A lot of time I hear liberal urbanists claiming that trading development rights for community amenities (I’d definitely include affordable housing mandates here) is a win-win situation, but there’s a real danger of killing the goose that laid the golden egg, as appears to be happening in Vancouver:
Development of the Cambie corridor [...]
By Stephen Smith, on December 24th, 2010
I didn’t mean for these all (except the last one) to be about DC, but it looks like it turned out that way…
1. Matt Yglesias on lot occupancy rules in DC. I have a feeling, though, that these are more or less irrelevant in the face of other, stricter limits on density.
[...]
By Stephen Smith, on December 22nd, 2010
For a libertarian urbanist blogger, I’ve always felt kind of embarrassed by my lack of knowledge about East Asian transit, considering that it’s the only place left on earth with a thriving competitive private transportation market (they even have profitable monorails!). I’ve heard good things about South Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong, but [...]
By Stephen Smith, on December 21st, 2010
Inclusionary zoning is a bad enough idea, but at least it doesn’t cost taxpayers anything directly. But New York State’s Housing Finance Agency is taking the worst of both worlds – affordable housing mandates and public subsidies – and plopping them down in new luxury construction in the heart of Downtown Brooklyn. Behold, [...]
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