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 not [...]
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August 31st, 2009 | Tags: airports, boondoggles, carbon, CATO, construction, cost-benefit analysis, high speed rail, highways, Matthew Yglesias, Randall O'Toole, ryan avent, Transportation, tyler cowen | Category: Economics, Environment, Free-market impostors, Transportation, infrastructure | Comments |
 printable viewAs Washington debates how many hundreds-of-billions of the nearly trillion-dollar stimulus will go towards infrastructure or to other spending/tax cut schemes, pundits claim that spending billions on “shovel ready” public works projects can effectively create jobs that will lead to recovery. As readers probably know, I am skeptical that the anticipated spending could be activated [...] January 12th, 2009 | Tags: boondoggles, budgets, construction, government, highways, infrastructure, paul krugman, roads, stimulus, Transportation, tyler cowen | Category: Economics, Free-market impostors, Transportation, Urban[ism] Legends, corruption | Comments |
printable viewEver hear of interesting economic indicators such as the correlation beween the economy and length of skirts? Here’s one urbanists should appreciate: the skyscraper index, which shows strong correlation between the completion of world’s tallest buildings and downturns in the business cycle. Mark Thornton discusses the skyscraper index in his article, Skyscrapers and Business Cycles [...] August 26th, 2008 | Tags: Building, business cycles, construction, development, Dubai, Economics, macroeconomics, skyscrapers | Category: Economics | Comments |
printable viewNo doubt, mass production of the automobile is one of the greatest innovations of all times. It has allowed for increased mobility of goods and people, which has greatly improved productivity and leisure. But, is subsidizing mobility at the expense of taxpayers taking things too far? In various blogs and forums, I frequently come across the [...] July 30th, 2008 | Tags: automobile, construction, DeLucchi, fuel, gas, infrastructure, mobility, roads, socialism, tax, tolls | Category: Economics, Transportation, Urban[ism] Legends, featured, infrastructure | Comments |
printable viewThis post will be the first of many of an ongoing feature at Market Urbanism entitled Urbanism Legends. (a play on the term: “Urban Legends” in case you didn’t catch that) In many public forums and in the blogosphere, I consistently encounter myths about land development and Urban Economics. These myths typically look at how [...] June 28th, 2008 | Tags: Beverly Hills, construction, demand, density, Economics, Free-market, infrastructure, smart growth, urban growth boundaries, Urban Legends, Urbanism, Urban[ism] Legends, William Graham Sumner, zoning | Category: Economics, Urban[ism] Legends, zoning | Comments |
printable viewMatthew Yglesias – What Price Density The solution, as Ryan Avent says, is to build denser communities. We ought to build more transit infrastructure, of course, but it’s cheaper to use what we already have more intensively. And, of course, it’s more practical to build new infrastructure if there’s a reasonable expectation that it will serve [...] June 10th, 2008 | Tags: Building, congestion, construction, density, development, Free-market, housing, infrastructure | Category: Economics, Transportation, housing, zoning | Comments |
printable viewIt’s easier to look at the symptom: corruption, than treat the disease: government over-regulation: Chicago Tribune: Role of expediters under scrutiny as federal probe targets City Hall corruption The unsung and highly specialized role these private individuals play in the workings of city government gained notoriety last week when investigators revealed that for the last year, an [...] May 28th, 2008 | Tags: bribery, bureaucracy, Chicago, construction, corruption, zoning | Category: corruption, zoning | Comments |
printable viewMatthew Yglesias just posted a thought referring to a recent NY Magazine article about skyfarming: Should we build agricultural skyscrapers in-or-near our major cities? It’s certainly a cool idea. I think I’m going to put the notion that this is actually environmentally sound and feasible in my “too good to check” file. More plausibly, green roofs [...] May 19th, 2008 | Tags: construction, energy, farming, green roofs, skyscrapers, Urban Farming, Urbanism | Category: Economics, Environment | Comments |
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