Wendell Cox has received his fair share of criticism from this blog, but his post last week about Tokyo's surprising lack of density is very interesting. Sure, Tokyo's suburbs are dense enough to be connected by job centers by rail, but the core is almost completely low- and lower-mid-rise, and thus … [Read more...]
Archives for June 2012
The High Cost of Free Parking Chapters 5-9
This post follows on the earlier discussion of the first four chapters of The High Cost of Free Parking.Chapter 5- A Great Planning DisasterShoup sets up parking requirements as a great planning disaster. If an individual developer chose to dedicate more of his land to parking than his … [Read more...]
A quick primer on CBTC and driverless trains
While doing some research for an article about driverless trains, I came across this document by Mircea Georgescu (who most recently worked at Thales [I think?] and whose email I can't track down! Mircea, if you're reading this, trimite-mi si mie te rog frumos un email la [email protected]!), that's … [Read more...]
Where is the Canadian real estate bubble going to hit hardest?
We've been hearing for a while now about a coming crash in Canadian property values, and it's really reached a fever pitch lately – seems like denying a Toronto bubble, at least, is pretty rare.What's interesting to me, though, is how different the bubble seems to be from the American one about … [Read more...]
Transpo bill gridlock staves off federal transit regulation
There are two general attitudes among urbanists towards the transportation omnibus bill that Congress has been struggling to pass in recent years (?). Some, like Streetsblogs and a number of political advocacy groups, hope for swift passage because of the bill's transit spending. Others, like Cap'n … [Read more...]
Libertarians at the Reason Foundation oppose latest California parking minimum reform bill
From Baruch Feisenbaum, who's the Reason Foundation's transportation analyst (disclaimer: I did an internship at Reason magazine a few years ago), surprising agreement with the American Planning Association's California branch on the parking minimum reform bill (or at least, it surprised me): The … [Read more...]
Ending rent control may not lower prices for non-regulated units
That's one takeaway from a paper sent to me by one of its co-authors, Andy Garin, at MIT, on the effects of the end of rent control in Massachusetts in 1995 on property values in Cambridge. Fascinating topic, and much thanks to Andy for sending it to me – it's always nice when other people write my … [Read more...]
Book Club Update
The next post on The High Cost of Free Parking will be on Monday, covering chapters 5-9, for anyone who is reading along. … [Read more...]