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Adam Hengels

Adam Hengels

  • Joined: May 21, 2025
  • Articles: 272
  • Comments: 186

Urban[ism] Legend: Creating Jobs With Infrastructure

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 details of his economic stimulus package: Second, we will create millions of jobs by making the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s. We’ll invest your precious tax dollars in new and smarter ways This further taxpayer subsidization, beyond currently insufficient highway revenue sources, of sprawl and auto-dependency seems to contradict Obama’s promise of “green jobs”. As Tyler Cowen remarks, “for better or worse you can consider the opposite of a carbon tax.” Furthermore, the Obama plan intends to fund the stimulus directly to states, as opposed to metro areas, which have historically received almost two-thirds of the funds directly. Certainly, Obama’s plan is not an urbanism-friendly plan, yet I consistently hear urbanists subscribing to and spreading the myth that jobs can be created by spending on infrastructure, and that these jobs will lead to economic recovery. Even if the job creation myth were true, and could stimulate the economy immediately, you would think urbanists would not sacrifice urbanist ideals for the sake of short-term recovery through their commitment to so-called progressive ideology. In his enduring 1961 classic, Economics in One Lesson, Henry Hazlitt addresses the long-standing myth about “creating jobs” through public works projects: A bridge is built. If it is built to meet an insistent public demand, if it solves a traffic problem or a transportation problem otherwise insoluble, if, in short, it is even more necessary to the taxpayers collectively than the things for which […]

Chicago Privatizes Parking Meters

Of course, Chicago is just privatizing the revenue from meters, not the actual parking spaces. Plus, the city will regulate rate increases, but it’s a step in the right direction. (right?) For today’s politicians, this is a great way to get windfalls of money today for revenues of future generations in order to mask their fiscal irresponsibility. I think we’ll see more of this during the current mess as other municipalities catch on. Ideally, cities should auction off the spaces (including the land), with no regulations on rates or use of the land. Let market mechanisms determine the highest-and-best use of the spaces and land. Chicago Tribune: Most city parking meters to cost $1 an hour [Hat Tip: reader, Dan M] City Hall officials said that after the first five years of the 75-year parking meter lease, rate hikes will be subject to approval by alderman and are expected to be at the rate of inflation. The $1.1 billion to city coffers will come from Chicago Parking Meter LLC, which is made up of two Morgan Stanley infrastructure funds. The Daley administration said $400 million will go into a long-term reserve, $325 million will be spent in city budgets through 2012 and $100 million is earmarked for programs helping low-income people. An additional $324 million is headed toward a fund city officials said “may be used to help bridge the period until the nation’s economy begins to grow again.” and a video:

Euclid’s Legacy

While well intentioned, like many progressive interventions of the eary 1900s, zoning has contributed to sprawl (which has begun to be demonized by progressives over the recent decades) and served to inhibit the vitality and diversity of urban neighborhoods. The triumph of the core philosophy behind Euclid vs. Ambler later enabled destructive urban renewal projects using eminent domain to displace entire neighborhoods, the emergence of unfriendly NIMBY activism, and more recently helped give legitimacy to the decision in the highly controversial Kelo v. New London Supreme Court Case. Steve at Urban Review STL, a Saint Louis-based urbanism blog, wrote a great summary of Euclidean Zoning in the US. The solution to these urban ills was zoning. Cities would create “land use” maps segregating industrial, office, retail, and housing. Early efforts were often used to keep industry from spoiling more pleasant areas of town. In Ohio the Village of Euclid, a Cleveland suburb, enacted zoning in 1921 to keep Cleveland’s industry out of its jurisdiction. A property owner viewed the restriction on the future use of their land as a “taking” by the government and filed suit. The case, Village of Euclid, Ohio v Ambler Realty, went all they way to the U.S. Supreme Court. A lower court had ruled the zoning law to be in conflict with the Ohio & U.S. Constitutions. The Supreme Court, however, disagreed and reversed the lower court’s ruling. Their November 22, 1926 ruling declared use zoning as legal. Since then it has been known as “Euclidean zoning.” In the 82 years since the Supreme Court validated the zoning ordinance for the Village of Euclid, Ohio we’ve managed to take a simple concept — keeping out heavy industry — to a point beyond reasonable. Cities and their suburbs now over regulate uses on land. Residential areas, […]

“The answer: Freedom.”

I related to this particular post by Michael Lewyn at Planetizen, Why I fight: Occasionally, someone familiar with my scholarship asks me: why do you care about walkability and sprawl and cities? Why is this cause more important to you than twenty other worthy causes you might be involved in? The answer: Freedom. Now, the article doesn’t discuss freedom from a property rights or free-market point of view, but from a mobility point of view. As a former “carless teenager” in suburbia (well, carless until 16), I can relate to that. I think my yearning for freedom is what sparked my interest in the city too. Of course, some people equate driving to freedom. For some its walkability, transit, or silent star filled skies. Freedom means different things to everyone, and I found my freedom in the diverse experiences and opportunities only available in the city.

Links to Interesting Articles

Market Urbanism readers may not have noticed, but not too long ago I added a feature to the sidebars labeled “Check these out.” This is a feed from the Market Urbanism del.icio.us bookmarks. I added this feature as a timesaving alternative to creating a new post every time I find a relevant article, leaving more time for in depth posts. You can subscribe to the feed here: rss feed Let me know what you think – is it better, or should I post more often? ——- Update: Look up! Based on your feedback, I made the feed a feedburner feed and created a animation at the top of the page featuring posts from the links feed. It looks like this:

Cul-de-sacs – Privatize ’em

Daniel Nairn at Discovering Urbanism brings up a great point about cul-de-sacs. Are they public goods, or truly unnecessary “socialism in its most extreme form”? Take the standard cul-de-sac that serves a handful of households. The purpose of this design is to exclude the general public from passing through while serving the automotive needs of a small number of individuals. Does it pass our intuitive sense of fairness to declare that the entire public, say the local municipal citizenry, ought to foot the bill for what could essentially be considered a shared driveway? Perhaps a more important question: How does the government’s decision of where to draw the line between public and private encourage or discourage the connectivity of the road system? Dan discusses that Virginia’s DOT is looking at shifting funding away from roads that don’t play a significant role in the transportation network, by using a very well defined metric: The link-node ratio is calculated by dividing the number of links (street segments and stub streets) by the number of nodes (intersections or cul-de-sacs). A perfect grid of streets will have a link-node ratio around 2.5 and a network of complete cul-de-sac or dead end streets with only one way in and one way out will have a link-node ratio of 1.0. It is suggested that a ratio of 1.4 will provide adequate connectivity in many situations. The link-to-node ratio seems like a very rational approach to determining public roadway funding, if one chooses to concede that roads are a public good. Unfortunately, owners of homes on cul-de-sacs have grown acustomed using their publicly-funded, communal driveways, and would suffer from decreased funding for roads they are entirely dependent upon. A viable solution would be for the municipality to grant the cul-de-sac roadway and land to the owners of […]

Who Owns the West?

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 even some western land could raise hundreds of billions of dollars – perhaps trillions of dollars – for the Federal government at a time when the funds are badly needed and no one want to raise taxes. At the same time, a sale of western land would improve the efficiency of land allocation. Alex suggests using the funds to buy cheaper land in the plains for The Buffalo Commons, the world’s largest nature park. I haven’t looked into the nature park idea, but I would like to see the Federal Government unload much of that land. The MR post links to an article at a blog called Strange Maps, which uncovered the map from Stanford Magazine. Strange Maps explains: This map details the percentage of state territory owned by the federal government. The top 10 list of states with the highest percentage of federally owned land looks like this: 1. Nevada 84.5% 2. Alaska 69.1% 3. Utah 57.4% 4. Oregon 53.1% 5. Idaho 50.2% 6. Arizona 48.1% 7. California 45.3% 8. Wyoming 42.3% 9. New Mexico 41.8% 10. Colorado 36.6%

Tolling NY’s East River Bridges Back on The Table?

[flickr: darren bryden] Congestion pricing schemes, touted as environmentally-responsible at the time of $4 gas, were defeated in New York City last Spring. However, as the market turmoil threatens to wreak havoc on tax revenues, fiscal necessity has lured New York State and New York City politicians to re-examine the political viability of charging tolls to drivers entering Manhattan. The NY Times City Room blog discusses the history of tolling on New York City’s East River bridges, but much of that history features plans to reinstate tolling and the popular resistance to those plans. How East River Bridges Stayed Toll-Free: On numerous occasions, politicians have tried to reinstitute tolls on the four bridges — the Brooklyn (completed in 1883), Williamsburg (completed in 1903) and Manhattan and Queensboro (both completed in 1909). After all, the Brooklyn Bridge charged horse-drawn carriages a toll from the time it opened. But by the Depression, the tolls were a thing of the past. The history shows that officials have failed again and again to revive tolls on the four bridges. (Other major crossings, including the bridges run by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, already charge tolls.) Tolling being “the third rail of of New York City politics”, it will be hard enough to institute in the face of voter sympathy for road socialism. So, we shouldn’t hold our breath for the ideal solution, full privatization of the bridges and transit, but tolling may be a step in the market direction. Or is it?? Is tolling just away for politicians to let themselves off the hook for their irresponsibility, and will just result in another new tax? Or can we hope it will soften the resistance to market-based solutions. [thanks to loyal Market Urbanism reader, Benjamin Hemric […]

Could NY Democrats Revive Rent Control?

New York State’s Assembly is now in Democratic control.  On many legislators wish list is to end the vacancy decontrol provisions that allow landlords to remove a unit from rent control if a tenant moves out and the unit rents for more than $2,000 per month.  (for those of you not in New York, apartments over $2,000 per month is actually almost all apartments in Manhattan and desirable locations of Brooklyn & Queens) Crains – Change in state Senate control could hurt landlords “Roadblocks to considering such legislation have been removed,” says Ms. Rosenthal, who represents the Upper West Side. “This will be at the top of many people’s agenda come January.” Of course, this is going to scare the crap out of landlords and renters of market-rate units. “With all of the current uncertainty, why would you throw another obstacle in the way of even more investment in housing in the city,” asks Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York. Mr. Spinola is also confident that Senate Democrats will not act quickly on housing laws. “They’re going to have enough trouble dealing with fiscal problems,” Mr. Spinola says. Maybe our wise legislators will take the time to learn about the microeconomics of rent control…

Sandy Ikeda Guest-Blogging at Market Urbanism

When the New York Sun decided to shut down its press, the biggest loss to the blogosphere was Sanford Ikeda’s Culture of Congestion blog. At the Sun, Sandy blogged about cities, economics, politics, and related subjects. Sandford Ikeda is an Associate Professor of Economics at SUNY Purchase. Professor Ikeda is the author of Dynamics of the Mixed Economy: Toward a Theory of Interventionism, involved with the Katrina Project at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and Past President of the Society for the Development of Austrian Economics. Much of Sandy’s work and blog posts has overlapped with Market Urbanism’s topics, and viewpoints. Sandy is also a fellow resident of Brooklyn, and admirer of cities. Naturally, I was very honored and excited that Sandy accepted my offer to publish his posts at Market Urbanism while he explores the many options available to him in the blogging world. I am certain Market Urbanism readers will enjoy Sandy’s contributions.

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