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By Stephen Smith, on August 9th, 2012
Server glitch wiped the last few articles, so here’s a repose of the Barcelona one. Also, comments should be working now, should you deign to leave one…
Somehow I managed to visit Barcelona a few years ago and not learn about the history of the city’s Eixample (x pronounced sh in Catalan), or extension/widening [...]
By Stephen Smith, on July 23rd, 2011
So I bought Richard White’s Railroaded based on the interview Emily blogged about earlier, and so far I’m enjoying it. It can be a bit polemical (“He was an eclectic hater who hated people who often hated one another”) and by page 34 I’ve already gotten lost a few times in railroad finance jargon, but [...]
By Stephen Smith, on May 2nd, 2011
In doing research for a post the other day, I stumbled upon this excerpt from a book called A History of Housing in New York City by Richard Plunz that I think has a useful lesson about development and regulation:
The garden apartment would not have emerged unless it was profitable. In this aspect the [...]
By Stephen Smith, on May 1st, 2011
Worth saving?
From the front lines of the New York City preservation wars, one landlord is trying to convince the Landmarks Preservation Commission to allow him to demolish two of his landmarked buildings on the Upper East Side – something the commission has only approved 11 times for the 27,000 landmarks it oversees. [...]
By Stephen Smith, on April 26th, 2011
“Light and air” is a very common excuse that people give for why we must have basic zoning laws, and while nowadays a lot of people mean it simply in an aesthetic sense – another way of saying “I like to be able to look out a window and not see another skyscraper 50 [...]
By Stephen Smith, on April 26th, 2011
I’ve been reading Stephen Goddard’s Getting There: The Epic Struggle between Road and Rail in the American Century, and it’s a great book with lots of excerpable content, but here’s one thing that caught my eye on page 170. I should note that when Goddard talks about “the highwaymen,” he’s talking about the old [...]
By Stephen Smith, on April 5th, 2011
Longtime Market Urbanism readers will know that we’re not huge fans of Joel Kotkin. But his most recent article on megacities (spoiler: the “triumphalism” surrounding them “frankly disturbs me”) sets a new low for sheer factual inaccuracy. I’m speaking specifically of his policy prescription, which appears to be based on the most innovative planning [...]
By Stephen Smith, on February 21st, 2011
1. An excellent Wikipedia article about the old DC streetcars. I wish there were more economics, and I’d also like to know about the state-mandated consolidation that they talk about in the mid-1890s. Also note that streetcar use reached its peak in the mid 1910s – when people talk about interstate highways and the [...]
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