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By Stephen Smith, on October 4th, 2011
California has, since the ’70s, had some of the strictest environmental laws in the country, but urbanists have recently been frustrated by what are known as CEQA lawsuits, named after the 1970 California Environmental Quality Act that serves as the basis of the challenges. CEQA battles have certainly hindered their fair share of highway and road projects, but they also affect transit and urban infill development, perhaps a perversion of the law’s pro-environmental intent.
Skirmishes over the law have yielded mixed results – transit projects were made more vulnerable by a recent ruling, while affordable housing projects are now less prone to CEQA challenges – but there has recently been talk of more major CEQA reform. Continue reading Real CEQA Reform, or Just Another Special Interest Handout?
Continue reading at Forbes...
By Stephen Smith, on February 7th, 2011
Andrés Duany, leader of the New Urbanism movement, comes out against LEED standards:
He said that high-density development in urban locations which entail less reliance on private cars should get a free pass on energy efficiency or energy generation standards. ”Don’t make apartment dwellers install solar power,” he said. ”They are doing their [...]
By Market Urbanism, on August 31st, 2009
I probably won’t make any friends today, but now I’ve read one too many urbanist (many who’s ideas I usually respect) use unsound logic to support high speed rail. This argument often includes something like this: “…and furthermore, highways and airports don’t come close to paying for themselves, therefore high speed rail need [...]
By Market Urbanism, on March 2nd, 2009
From "Highway to hell revisited", a Financial Times article by Christopher Caldwell:
The Highway Act probably has more defenders than detractors. But Mr Obama should be among the latter. The act, which budgeted $25bn in federal money to build 41,000 miles of motorway, exacerbated the very problems Mr Obama has been most eager [...]
By Stephen Smith, on January 31st, 2009
by Stephen Smith
While most people associate cities with pollution and the material and ecological excess of late capitalism, I’ve long believed that urbanization has the potential to be a great environmental savior. The NYT has a fascinating article that confirms what I said about cities attracting people who would otherwise live more [...]
By Market Urbanism, on December 8th, 2008
This post is part of an ongoing series featured on Market Urbanism called Urbanism Legends. The Urbanism Legends series is intended to expose many of the myths about development and Urban Economics. (it’s a play on the term: “Urban Legends” in case you didn’t catch that)
Last week President-elect Obama announced some [...]
By sandyikeda, on November 29th, 2008
by Sandy Ikeda
The other day I was lecturing to my students about externalities and the Coase Theorem. One of the examples I used came directly from the our textbook – Heyne, Boettke, & Prychitko’s The Economic Way of Thinking. It asks what would happen if you tried to declare a large tree [...]
By Market Urbanism, on November 13th, 2008
Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution – Now is the Time for the Buffalo Commons:
The Federal Government owns more than half of Oregon, Utah, Nevada, Idaho and Alaska and it owns nearly half of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming. See the map for more. It is time for a sale. Selling [...]
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