Market Urbanism:
In this blog I intend to introduce free-market thought to urbanists, and introduce urbanism to market advocates. I also hope to incorporate some ideas relating to environmentalism in the built environment. I like to refer to the connections between free-market economic thought, urbanism, and environmentalism as “Market Urbanism.”
Through my personal inquiry, I have concluded that free market advocates and urbanists actually share many objectives.
Growing up in suburban Chicago, I felt there was something inefficient about the land patterns and transportation of the suburbs. When I discovered urbanism in freshman architecture/planning coursework, the concepts made sense, despite the paternalistic bent of the professors who advocated urbanism. Thus, I became conflicted between my urbanist instinct and my free market instinct. Through study and practice of building and infrastructure design and construction, economics, planning, development, and urban economics I came to the realization that our problems with sprawl, congestion, and automobile dependency were the result of socialistic economic planning of our transportation system and land use, not due to market failures as many urbanists proclaim.
Market Urbanism examines how market forces and property rights enable complex, yet vibrant and economically robust communities and regions to emerge through the “spontaneous order” of the land use and transportation marketplace. When left to market forces, as opposed to intervention, land use patterns and transportation systems reflect a society that is economically and environmentally more efficient and just than when imposed in a top-down fashion by government.
I intend to present arguments and articles which help spread the results of my inquiry. I don’t expect to convince everyone to completely adopt a free-market point of view. However, I do hope to convince everyone that there are many cases in which better outcomes would be achieved if the government intervened less and convince those with ambitious plans for society to be more humble in asserting how society should be laid out. I hope you find the blog interesting.
I currently practice real estate development and investments at a large real estate development company in New York City and am also starting up a small real estate investment fund in Chicago on the side.
Contact me at adam@marketurbanism.com
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