Market Urbanism

Liberalizing cities | From the bottom up

“Market Urbanism” refers to the synthesis of classical liberal economics and ethics (market), with an appreciation of the urban way of life and its benefits to society (urbanism). We advocate for the emergence of bottom up solutions to urban issues, as opposed to ones imposed from the top down.

Survey: New Yorkers like Manhattan, the subway and more housing

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The Manhattan Institute, a conservative (by New York standards) think tank, recently published a survey of New York residents; a few items are of interest to urbanists. A few items struck me as interesting. One question (p.8) asked "If you could live anywhere, would you live..." in your current … [Read more...]

The “Renters Are Evil” Argument For Zoning

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Charles Marohn's recent article in The American Conservative on the evils of single-family zoning received over 200 comments. The most provocative responses were the ones forthrightly defending exclusion, on the grounds that renters are dangerous and must be excluded at all costs.  For … [Read more...]

More on Subways and COVID-19

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After reading an article suggesting that New York's subways seeded COVID-19, Salim Furth's response to that article on this blog, and one or two other pieces, I decided to write a more scholarly piece summarizing the various arguments. The piece is at https://works.bepress.com/lewyn/196/ For … [Read more...]

Do cities have too much public space?

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My sense is that parks and similar forms of public space tend to be far less controversial than housing or industry. But an interesting paper by Israeli architecture professor Hillel Schocken suggests that a city can have too much public space. He begins by asking: why do cities exist? He … [Read more...]

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