Adam Hengels

1. Announcements: MUsings are back!!  This week, we’ll get you caught up on the latest on our site and social media. Be sure to check out and share the new documentary video produced by The Institute for Humane Studies’ Josh Oldham, in collaboration with MU’s Nolan Gray and Sandy Ikeda. 2. Recently at Market Urbanism: California Legislation Threatens to Become Law and Build More Housing by Martha Ekdahl The bill, AB 2923, specifically targets the San Francisco Bay Area—making it easier than ever for the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) to build housing on the land it owns around its transit stations. Light and Air, Sound and Fury; or, Was the Equitable Life Building Panic Only About Shadows? by Nolan Gray In city after city, zoning was pitched as a way to preserve property values. And as the Federal Housing Administration marched across the country as a kind of dark Johnny Appleseed for Euclidean zoning, demanding use segregation, single-family zoning, and low densities in exchange for subsidized mortgages, the agency always defended its demands as an attempt to protect property values. Video: How Zoning Laws Are Holding Back America’s Cities by Nolan Gray It’s an understatement to say that zoning is a dry subject. But in a new video for the Institute for Humane Studies, Josh Oldham and Professor Sanford Ikeda (a regular contributor to this blog) manage to breath new life into this subject, accessibly explaining how zoning has transformed America’s cities. The Foreign Buyers Are Taking Over (Not!) by Michael Lewyn A headline in the Boston Globe screams: “Boston’s new luxury towers appear to house few local residents.” The headline is based on a report by the leftist Institute for Policy Studies, which claims that in twelve Boston condo buildings, “64 percent do not claim a residential exemption, […]

1. Announcements: Get ready for Market Urbanism at #FEEcon June 15-17 in Atlanta.   Market Urbanists can use the code MU40OFF to get 40% off.  We’ll have several other exciting announcements over the next few days.  We can’t wait to see you there! If you are in New York, Market Urbanism is pleased to be a partner of Smart Cities NYC ’17: Powered by People, May 3-6. (smartcitiesnyc.com).  The offer code SCNYC100 gets market urbanists a $100 ticket discounted down from the $1,200 standard price. Sandy Ikeda has a short clip in the film Citizen Jane: Battle for the City.  Go see it!! Sandy Ikeda‘s Annual Jane’s Walk in Brooklyn Heights is this Sunday at 12:15. Vince Graham, former Chairman of the South Carolina Transportation Infrastructure Bank and friend of Market Urbanism published an op-ed in the Charleston Post and Courier: Unhealthy S.C. appetite for roads demands a diet 2. Recently at Market Urbanism: Market Urbanist Book Review: Cities and The Wealth of Nations by Jane Jacobs by Matthew Robare It seems like just about everyone who has ever set foot in a major city has read The Death and Life of Great American Cities and most professional urban planners have embraced at least part of her ideas. But that was not the only book she wrote and the others deserve attention from urbanists. Government-Created Parking Externalities by Emily Hamilton Developers are not responsible for creating a traffic congestion externality. Rather, city policymakers create this externality when they provide free or underpriced street parking. They cause drivers to waste time and gas sitting in traffic. Parking is not a public good that needs to be publicly-provided; it’s both rivalrous and excludable. Richard Florida and Market Urbanism by Michael Lewyn Florida writes that part of this “crisis” is the exploding cost of housing in some […]

  1. Announcements John Morris has started an alternative Facebook group called Flyover Urbanism: A Market Urbanist Group for Flyover Country 2. This Week at Market Urbanism Emily Hamilton Market Urbanism is Still underrated New data keeps coming in that shows that increases in housing supply tend to be followed by declining rental rates, even in the cities facing the highest demand. Nolan Gray Towards A Liberal Approach To Urban Form A liberal approach to urban form accepts that reasonable people can disagree over the ideal urban arrangement. Wrapped into every grand vision and design regulation are particular normative preferences that many may not share. Should retail and residential be separate? Should every apartment receive at least one hour of direct sunlight? Should everyone live on a one acre lot? Jeff Fong Building A Better BART BART owns acres of surface parking spread out across the system. If it were to redevelop these parking lots into high density, mixed use developments, it could copy the MTRC model and create a high yield stream of revenue. Sandy Ikeda The Other Broken Window Whether you quickly mend a broken window, bend over to pick up a piece of trash, or intervene when someone disturbs the peace depends in part on your personal ethics, of course. But it also depends very much on whether your neighbors will applaud or laugh at you for doing it. 3. Where’s Scott? Scott Beyer remains in Portland, and this weekend will visit Eugene and Corvallis. His Forbes article this week was Portland’s Urban Growth Boundary: A Driver of Suburban Sprawl If bustling cities prevent what can be vaguely defined as “sprawl” on their nearest virgin land, it’s not like the people will go away and the sprawl will stop. It may resurface in even more remote places. This is counterproductive both for [density] advocates, and […]

1. Announcements I’ve posted a link on the homepage giving more info on the Market Urbanism programming at the upcoming FEE Conference, which is in Atlanta, June 15-17… The YIMBY party announced it will hold its 2nd annual conference, occurring this year in Oakland, July 13-16… And recently another YIMBY group popped up: YIMBY Denver! 2. This Week at Market Urbanism Michael Lewyn wrote Where the permits are & The “Foreign Buyers” Argument A common argument against new housing supply is that in high-cost cities such as New York, demand from foreign buyers is so overwhelming as to make new supply irrelevant. A recent study (available here) by two business school professors suggests otherwise. Emily Hamilton Conflicting Affordable Housing Policies Recently I presented on a panel at Chapman University on the future of housing in Orange County. Our panel highlighted the tensions between housing programs designed to help low-income and homeless households and those designed to help middle-income households. Sandy Ikeda wrote Addressing Local Knowledge & a book review on The Future Once Happened Here & Of Maps and Modernism In a sense, it may seem silly to criticize a map for being abstract, since, well, that’s what maps are supposed to do or else they would be useless.  But there is such a thing as being too abstract.  Maps should not abstract from what is essential to its purpose, which is to facilitate travel. 3. MU Elsewhere Emily‘s speech at Chapman University can be found at the 19:30 mark of this link Nolan Gray’s piece last year on Houston’s partial embrace of Market Urbanism was republished on FEE.org. He also published a to-do list for HUD secretary Ben Carson at Forbes. Carson could direct HUD officials to craft and disseminate model zoning reform legislation to the states. As urban history geeks may know, conventional “Euclidian” zoning […]

1. Announcement Another reminder, if you’re a Los Angeles resident, to vote “no” on Measure S on Tuesday, March 7th. More info on the anti-housing initiative can be found here. 2. This Week at Market Urbanism Yglesias Gives Best Tweetstorm Ever by Michael Lewyn Governing The Traffic Commons by Sandy Ikeda I recently showed my students a short video about a radical way of addressing problems of traffic congestion: accidents, pollution, and time wasted on the road…It’s quite simple: Remove traffic lights, cautions, and marked pedestrian crossings. Asher Meyers provides the latest in World City Profiles: European Villages Are Showcases Of Old Urbanism There is always the lurking suspicion that great urbanism is a museum piece, something we cannot recreate. We have to console ourselves with guarding what’s left. Even then, some feel it unfit for ‘modern life,’ that humans cannot live as their recent ancestors had. Urbanists tend to celebrate cities and spaces of great renown, which makes remaking our own little corner of the world seem futile. 3. Where’s Scott? Scott Beyer has left San Francisco and is moving this weekend towards Portland, with in-between stops in Redding, Medford, Eugene and more. His 3 articles this week included one for Governing Magazine on the Yimby Movement, and two for Forbes  United States Has 5 Of World’s 10 Most Congested Cities and How Far Can Miami’s Beach Development Spread? But the real story is what’s happening north of Miami Beach. Aside from a few areas dedicated to state parkland, there is now essentially a contiguous urban shoreline extending from the southern tip of Miami Beach up to Fort Lauderdale…And an awful lot of this area is becoming vertical. 4. At the Market Urbanism Facebook Group John Morris wants to start a Pittsburgh Yimby group Isabella Chu wants to know the connection between urban density and improved health outcomes Hussain Akbari wants […]