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Emily Hamilton

Emily Hamilton

  • Joined: May 21, 2025
  • Articles: 154

Book Review of Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi

I’m reviewing Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi by Steve Inskeep as part of a TLC Book Tour. Other bloggers are also reviewing the book throughout October, and you can find links to their reviews here. I received a complimentary copy of the book, and I’d like to send it to a reader if anyone who’d like to read it doesn’t mind a copy with some underlining and margin notes. If you’d like it, just comment saying so by Wednesday, November 2nd. If multiple readers would like it, I’ll pick one at random. _____________________________ In a manner that is rare for non fiction, Instant City is really a page turner. Inskeep takes us through the history of Karachi from Pakistan’s independence in 1947 through the present, stringing personal stories of social entrepreneurs, politicians, activists and real estate developers together to tell the city’s story. He revolves the historical accounts around a 2007 bombing, in which unknown perpetrators bombed a procession that was part of a Shia religious holiday. Following the bombing, rioters burned down blocks of wholesale retail buildings. Despite the arrests of four suspects, many of the city’s residents are so distrustful of the city’s MQM government that they believe that city officials caused the bombing and subsequent fires in order to clear out the neighborhood’s current tenants to make way for more glamorous businesses. While the city’s mayor passionately denies that city government had any involvement with burning its citizens’ property, that residents have so little faith in their government demonstrates how absent the rule of law is in Karachi regarding property rights to land. In with the history of the city’s history, growth, and conflict, Inskeep covers land use in Karachi in considerable detail. To me, “Groundbreaking” is the most interesting chapter, where Inskeep details the experience of slum clearance in the […]

Cities and the Market Process: Part 1

In a post about the tendency for emergent urbanists to promote the idea of cities having a single equilibrium, Alon Levy recently wrote that collective choice is the best manner for determining urban form. Many urbanists accept that some of the top-down regulations that limit density or use are detrimental to cities, but they often stop short of suggesting that land use regulation should be abolished and transportation privatized, which I will support here with arguments based in Austrian economics. This post does not get to a critique of the collective choice that Alon supports; later entries in this market process series will address both the problems of creating urban policy through collective choice, and some of the institutions that have emerged within civil society that are essential to cities and their residents. The cohort of economists and urbanists who support the elimination of land use regulation is small because cities present all of the problems that neoclassical and Keynesian economists describe as market failures, including externalities, high transaction costs involved in Coasean bargaining, non-excludable goods, etc. However, I believe that emergent solutions solve these problems more effectively than either central planning or collective decision making that becomes law, and the failed and inefficient government projects that urbanist bloggers write about everyday suggest that government failure is no trivial concern. The first reason that regulation is a poor tool to for determining urban form comes from Friedrich Hayek. He clearly identified the calculation problem inherent in central planning: the information necessary to coordinate markets (including land use markets) is held by individuals with “particular knowledge of time and place.” Even assuming that urban planners are benevolent and seek to provide the best outcomes for their communities, they could never compile the knowledge necessary to determine what those outcomes are. Jane […]

Brookings Study on HCVs; Results to be Expected

This post originally appeared at Neighborhood Effects, a Mercatus Center blog where we write about state and local policy issues as well as the broad concepts of economic freedom.    A new Brookings study by Kenya Covington, Lance Freeman, and Michael Stoll finds that increasingly, recipients of housing vouchers are using these subsidies to move from inner cities to suburbs. The authors support low-income people moving to high-income suburbs because they suggest that this is where they would have the best job prospects. However the study authors find that about half of all HCV recipients moved to low-income suburbs rather than high-income suburbs, and they assert that this is a problem because low-income suburbs do not have as many job opportunities as their high-income counterparts. This result is unsurprising, though, since vouchers go further in areas with lower housing costs. The study does not take into account the individualized process of housing decisions because it relies on aggregate statistics and looks only at the ratio of people to jobs, ignoring other variables such as availability of housing and transit. In the executive summary, Covington, Freeman, and Stoll suggest that “policies that … reevaluate existing zoning laws and development impact fees … could give HCV recipients access to a broader range of high-quality residential environments,” but they do not pick up on these themes in their policy recommendations. Instead they focus on shaping the way that individuals choose to use their housing subsidies. By relaxing density restrictions both in urban cores and in suburbs, policymakers would allow landlords to build housing that is accessible to a wider range of incomes with and without housing vouchers. HCVs offer a major improvement over publicly provided housing specifically because they allow individuals to choose the best place to live for themselves, using local knowledge rather than top-down planning. The Brookings authors […]

Fictional Scandal at the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

Stephen’s post on alleged corruption at the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission reminded me of a great scene from The Bonfire of the Vanities that I wanted to share here. Tom Wolfe describes a scenario in which a black bishop wants to sell his church’s property in order to raise money for the congregation. The fictional mayor’s assistant explains: “The bishop wants to sell St. Timothy’s to a developer, on the grounds that the membership is declining, and the church is losing a lot of money, which is true. But the community groups are putting a lot of pressure on the Landmarks Commission to landmark it so that nobody can alter the building even after they buy it.” “Is this guy honest?” asked the mayor. “Who gets the money if they sell the church?” “I never heard he wasn’t honest,” said Sheldon. “He’s a learned gentleman of the cloth. He went to Harvard. He could still be greedy, I suppose, but I have no reason to think he is.” The mayor meets with the bishop to discuss the issue of preserving the church and realizes that Bishop Thomas is an ideal connection to improve his approval with the black community. The mayor agrees to prevent the church from being landmarked and the bishop is overcome with gratitude at the benefit selling the property will provide the congregation. Then the mayor tells the bishop that he wants him to serve on a new “blue-ribbon commission against crime.” When the bishop declines because the commission would conflict with his role in the church, the mayor says not to worry about the church remaining without landmark status: “Don’t worry about that at all. As I said I didn’t do it for you and I didn’t do it for your church. I did […]

DC Councilmembers Take a (Soft) Stand Against Parking

DCist reports that DC city councilmembers Tommy Wells and Mary Cheh proposed legislation that would allow the mayor to designate apartment buildings where residents would not be allowed to purchase residential parking permits. This innovative legislation would mark a sharp turn away from typical municipal policies that enforce parking minimums for developers. According to the DCist, building owners would be able to seek this designation for their properties only when no units are currently leased. I contacted both councilmembers to find out more information on this proposed rule — such as whether developers will be incentivized to achieve this designation or if this designation would be voided when these buildings sell — but have not yet heard back. My first thought on this legislation is that it has low potential for costs or unintended consequences and certainly marks an improvement over parking minimums. However, I also can’t imagine that this legislation would have a significant impact on the number of people parking on DC streets. Because people would self-select into buildings designated as parking-free, those who choose to rent in these buildings will probably be people who don’t have cars anyway. A more effective solution would be to raise the cost of residential parking permits to the revenue-maximizing levels, varying these rates across neighborhoods in accordance with demand.

Alon Levy on the Suburbanization of Poverty

Over at Pedestrian Observations, Alon Levy has a typically well-written and researched post on the gentrification of poverty. He explores the well-researched trend that low-income Americans are increasingly moving to the suburbs as gentrification is driving up rents in inner cities. He hypothesizes that this “current” trend has really been happening for the past fifty years: Both the inner and the outer limits of poverty are pushed outward. What we saw last decade was just a tipping point in which the expansion of the gentrified core was by itself enough to offset the wealth loss coming from the expansion of the ghetto. Levy suggests that this trend is largely due to the typical pattern of poverty moving outward in a “donut” pattern, but today the center of the donut is in the suburbs. He writes: In general, a similar story played out in the first-ring suburbs of many Rust Belt cities, especially in ill-favored quarters: the places that people used to flee the city to are now cities that people flee. His post sparked two thoughts: 1) Could part of the reason that wealthy and middle income residents are moving to inner cities have to do with the demand for time? As we as a society are becoming wealthier, the value of time — the ultimate finite resource — is increasing. So as the price of free time rises, people may be moving to places where their commute times are shorter. In many cases, they are trading off quality of public schools and public safety to enjoy shorter commutes. When they move to Jacobian mixed-use neighborhoods, they could enjoy the added benefit of shorter travel time when running errands and seeking out entertainment. I think this pull toward inner cities helps explain gentrification, in addition to the push away from […]

Spreading ideas through the urban process

I’m at the Living Cities 20th Anniversary today, liveblogging on the discussions that panelists are having here. This post, a little out of the vein of the topics we typically talk about at Market Urbanism, originally appeared at Next American City. Steven Johnson and Paula Ellis, of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, discussed some of the themes in his new book, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, including the unique environment for innovation that cities provide. Johnson draws on the work of Jane Jacobs and Geoffrey West to demonstrate that innovation is most likely to happen in places where humans are densely clustered because entrepreneurs rely on the work of others. Both to see through the uncertainties of the future to realize profitable ideas, and to overcome the challenges of product development, entrepreneurs need to live in urban areas. Johnson began his conversation explaining that many of the ideals that emerged in the Scottish Enlightenment came out of coffeehouses, through the spontaneous conversations that many brilliant men had, and the evolution of their ideas in this urban space. Looking back to these Enlightenment ideals, we can see that Adam Smith, perhaps one of the original urbanists, explained that the division of labor is limited by the size of the market. Continued urban growth provides individuals with growing opportunities to specialize, as both the consumers and technological developments that fuel the market process are consolidated in the same place. In West’s work that Johnson referenced, he explains that, unlike firms that become increasingly bureaucratic and inefficient as they grow, cities continue to become more productive as they grow in size and density. As Johnson explained, cities have a “liquid property because they have the convergence of diverse people sharing a space. This is an incredible asset.” […]

Capital markets for urban entrepreneurs

I’m at the Living Cities 20th Anniversary today, liveblogging on the discussions that panelists are having here. This post, a little out of the vein of the topics we typically talk about at Market Urbanism, originally appeared at Next American City. Patrick McCarthey of the Annie E. Casey Foundation articulated one of the missions of the Living Cities collaboration as helping Americans in the bottom 40 percent of the income distribution. As the collaboration seeks to help cities develop, it also seeks to improve the development of human capital in these communities. To this point, Dudley Benoit of JP Morgan Chase suggested that improved efficiency in capital markets is key to achieving this goal. While microfinance has flourished in developing countries, investors have not been as eager to provide small loans to small businesses in the United States. While philanthropic organizations focused on community development have often focused on the making top-down improvements to the physical landscape of urbanities, Benoit brings up that the human capital that allows cities to facilitate economic innovation is more important than their physical components, and that economic development must be a bottom-up process. Living Cities’ President and CEO Ben Hecht points out that no one individual can solve the problems that a city poses – as Jane Jacobs and Friedrich Hayek both identified, complex human systems must draw on decentralized knowledge that cannot be centrally compiled. Access to capital for urban entrepreneurs is essential for the economic rebirth of cities that Living Cities fosters.  

Transit Oriented Development in Chevy Chase

In Chevy Chase, MD county planners have revised plans for the Chevy Chase Lake Sector from high rise, mixed-use development to low-rise, primarily residential buildings. The trigger to allow for higher-density development will be the arrival of the Purple Line, a proposed light rail that would stretch across Metro’s Red Line. The light rail would connect Bethesda directly to New Carollton. Construction is scheduled to be completed by 2020, but I for one am not betting on a light rail by that time. For one, no funding has been secured, and for another reason the project is met with considerable opposition to NIMBY-ists in Bethesda and Silver Spring. The town of Chevy Chase has been the most vocal opponent of the project. Personally, I could see the Purple Line being very well-used, and potentially coming closer to profitability than the “cherry blossom” line. However, waiting for the arrival of transit to permit Transit Oriented Development creates a chicken and egg problem. When high-density development is not allowed where there is demand for it, the restriction limits potential for other viable transit options. For example increasing density along the proposed Purple Line could allow for a Circulator or increased MTA routes to provide service in the meantime. And opposition to the light rail is likely to remain strong as long as residents don’t see the clear value of mass transit in their municipalities.  

New funding for roads in Georgia

The Georgia Department of Transportation recently approved $102 million in projects to improve the state’s infrastructure. The department gave the go ahead on these projects as the state is in the midst of a debate over a new proposed one percent sales tax to help fund infrastructure. Highway supporters often argue that fuel taxes fund road construction and maintenance, but this is simply not the case, leading to the need for other dedicated transportation funding, like the Georgia sales tax. Improvements slated to benefit from the new fund include highways, bridges, and public transit. Metropolitan Planning Organization Coordinator Corey Hull said, “We … want them to know this is our only option right now. The state does not have a plan B for funding transportation and infrastructure.” Clearly, the fuel tax is not meeting the funding requirements for the states’ drivers, so the funding is being drawn from the wider state population, including non-drivers. Currently, this may be a small distinction in Georgia, though, where only 2.7% of residents take public transportation to work. Like road improvements, public transportation projects in Georgia are funded by the broader tax base rather than the constituents that actually rely on the service. Perhaps the number of Georgians who take public transportation to work will grow with the proposed expansions to Atlanta’s light rail. However, it’s hard to imagine that such marginal improvements to public transit will create meaningful change to transportation in a city like Atlanta, which was was largely designed around the highway system. As a result of low demand for transit in Atlanta, the city hopes to cover only 20 percent of the operating costs of a new streetcar system with fares. Rail has many clear advantages over buses — these systems are typically faster and easier for riders to navigate. However, in a […]

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