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Stephen Smith

Stephen Smith

I graduated Spring 2010 from Georgetown undergrad, with an entirely unrelated and highly regrettable major that might have made a little more sense if I actually wanted to become an international trade lawyer, but which alas seems good for little else. I still do most of the tweeting for Market Urbanism Stephen had previously written on urbanism at Forbes.com. Articles Profile; Reason Magazine, and Next City
  • Joined: May 21, 2025
  • Articles: 282
  • Comments: 41

Environmentalism vs. density

Recently I was reading an article about the death-by-delay of an upzoning proposal near a train station in Boston because the property might have been “considered ‘priority habitat’ for rare species, including the eastern box turtle,” and I thought about all the times I’ve heard of opponents of density hiding behind environmentalism. Ed Glaeser has written about how Bay Area environmentalists’ opposition to development and California courts’ institution of onerous environmental reviews have encouraged sprawl, and last year we learned that the Northeast Corridor was denied HSR stimulus money because of the lengthy multi-state environmental review necessary. A few minutes of Googling reveals that stormwater mitigation rules, intended to minimize the amount of polluted runoff entering the watershed, have also been accused of favoring sprawling, greenfield development over infill and denser redevelopment. Existing structures are generally grandfathered in, but any redevelopment apparently must meet the new rules, even if it has no more impervious surface than the building it seeks to replace. Density bonuses for “green” building techniques also strike me as a bit backwards, considering that density is “green” in its own right. I can’t find any quantitative research on how much of a problem these supposedly pro-environment rules really are, and I don’t have the practical experience of a developer or a planner, but perhaps some commenters will chime in with their knowledge or come up with other instances of environmentalism taking precedence over density.

Weekend links

Links, links, links! 1. The Washington City Paper has a great expose on street food in DC called “Inside D.C.’s Food-Truck Wars” with the subtitle “How some of Washington’s most powerful interests are trying to curb the city’s most popular new cuisine.” 2. Mary Newsom at the Charlotte Observer thinks it’s a bad thing that Charlotte allowed so much density around its wildly popular new light rail line because it’s driving up property values. The Overhead Wire says that this is natural when land is scarce, and that “if you built all the [proposed] lines at once, that pressure gets relieved five or six ways instead of one way.” This is to some extent true, but another solution to the scarcity of transit-oriented property is to allow more even development around the existing line by loosening zoning and parking rules. 3. Ryan Avent finds research that finds that congestion pricing in Stockholm, where citizens voted on the plan after a seven-month test period, became more popular after they experienced it. Then again, congestion pricing in New York and elsewhere depends not only on people living in the city, but also people living outside of it, who are much less likely to warm up to it. Also, it looks like Stockholm expanded transit (mostly bus) service along with congestion pricing. 4. The pilot private van initiative in NYC that we discussed earlier has been floundering, and Cap’n Transit has been all over it. Literally every post on the front page of his blog is about it. There seem to be many reasons for the vans’ failure, and I might write something on it in the future, but in the meantime read Cap’n Transit if you’re interested. 5. Philadelphia Inquirer architecture critic Inga Saffron praises recently-fired Philadelphia Housing Authority boss Carl Greene’s […]

The Great American Streetcar Myth

by Stephen Smith Among liberals in the planning profession today, the story of the Great American Streetcar Conspiracy is widely known. There are more nuanced variants, but it goes something like this: Streetcars were once plentiful and efficient, but then along came a bunch of car and oil companies like General Motors and Standard Oil, and they bought up all the streetcar companies, tore out their tracks and replaced the routes with buses, and ultimately set America on its present path to motorized suburban hell. Although the story dates back to a 1950 court conviction and was retold by academics and government employees throughout the ’60s and ’70s, the theory leapt into the public consciousness in 1988 with both a 60 Minutes piece and a fictionalized account in the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. Even today it resonates with liberals – The Atlantic casually mentions it as the reason America abandoned mass transit, The Nation wrote a whole article about it a few years ago, Fast Food Nation discusses it, and in the last week I’ve seen two references to the theory in the planning blogosphere. Though the story has embedded itself in the liberal worldview, it has little basis in reality. A cursory look at transportation history shows that motorization was already well underway by the time National City Lines – the holding company backed by GM, Firestone Tire, and Standard Oil, among others – started buying up transit companies in 1938. Other factors, often championed by progressives, had already driven the industry into decline and it was really only a matter of time before buses took over. Although General Motors and other car-centric companies were certainly lobbying the government in their favor, the progressive tendency to vilify private transit companies had already turned the public against streetcars, and […]

Building what you can

by Stephen Smith BLDG blog has a cool post about a book by two architects about “minor development,” or small construction projects that don’t require planning permission – things like sheds, garages, and extensions. It talks about recent legal changes in Europe that have encouraged this sort of development, and has some neat pictures of the sort of small changes that can add a room or just extra space to existing houses. The article doesn’t mention it, but this immediately brings to mind laneway housing – basically converting garages into inhabitable buildings and sometimes building in existing parking spaces. Vancouver legalized laneway housing last year, and though you still need a $899 permit, you don’t have to file for a variance and the process seems streamlined (although curiously, the article says the units can “only [be] used as rental units”…does that mean you’re not allowed to tear down your garage and build extra space for yourself?). These are small sorts of infill allowances that aren’t going to radically alter a city like parking, zoning, or road reform could. But although we’d prefer complete property rights with the ability to build on (or not build on, or sell) as much of your land as you’d like, this is at least a step in the right direction.

A comment on rolling stock protectionism

by Stephen Smith In response to an article I posted yesterday about protectionism in public transit procurement, frequent commenter Alon Levy left this great comment about the history of rolling stock procurement in the US: What happened in the 1970s was that the rolling stock market shrank, leaving American transit agencies with just a few US vendors. St. Louis and Pullman were fully protected by Buy American. As such, New York City Transit had no choice but to buy trains from them; the trains turned out to be defective, leading to breach of contract lawsuits that bankrupted both companies. Since then, NYCT has bought from foreign companies, following Buy America to the letter but not to the spirit. The first order after the St. Louis and Pullman disasters was imported from Kobe, as Reagan cut all federal funding, and went without a hitch. Subsequent orders required the vendors to establish US plants, but often only the final assembly is done in the US. In the most recent order, the car shells were made in Brazil. Buy America does the opposite of leveling the playing field for foreign firms. It favors big players, which can land big contracts and establish US plants. The same is true for the regulatory structure: the various globally unique [Federal Railroad Administration] rules benefit companies that are big enough to be able to modify trains for the American market. Just recently, Caltrain’s request for an FRA waiver involved consultation with just the largest companies in the industry. There are a lot of smaller manufacturers that are shut out of the US market; they don’t have the capital to establish new overseas factories or pay lobbyists to write rules in their favor. Those include Switzerland’s Stadler, Spain’s CAF, the Czech Republic’s Skoda, all Chinese firms, and all […]

North Jersey jitneys take off

by Stephen Smith In the past few years, a relatively new phenomenon seems to be taking hold in cities across North Jersey: the jitney. Similar to the dollar vans that ply the streets of Brooklyn and Queens, jitneys carry more than a taxi but less than a full-sized bus, and run semi-regular routes that often shadow city bus routes. But unlike the dollar vans of New York, the jitneys in North Jersey are legal and regulated (albeit lightly), and so in addition to local feeder service and circuits around New Jersey, they also run routes directly into Manhattan. In terms of quality, the jitneys appear quite advanced – customers report that jitneys come more frequently than NJ Transit buses, and the price is lower (at least for individual tickets). The small bus size guarantees everybody a seat, and buses display stickers to indicate the presence of air conditioning. The complaints about the jitneys are familiar: they drive erratically trying to pick up fares, they’re poorly maintained, they don’t follow traffic rules. Recent random inspections have led to the impounding of more than half of the vehicles inspected, with violations ranging from missing fire extinguishers to gas leaks. The jitney drivers have countered that the inspectors are biased against them and don’t subject NJ Transit buses to such stringent checks, and they’ve also downplayed the nature of some of the violations against them. In any case, the dangerous driving that the jitneys engage in to poach fares from each other is a problem that needs to be solved, lest it take the whole system down. Because the roadway and curbs are provided as public goods to all comers, we encounter a tragedy of the commons, whereby the competition between drivers ultimately becomes counterproductive and harmful of overall welfare. While our ideal […]

“Buy American” drives up cost of transit

by Stephen Smith As if America’s public transportation networks weren’t hobbled enough by union wages and pensions, the Obama administration’s “Buy American” pandering is adding to the burden. One streetcar line in Houston has been sent back to the drawing board because it didn’t comply with purchasing provisions attached to federal money: The Federal Transit Administration told Metro officials, Mayor Annise Parker and local members of Congress Wednesday that the process Metro used to award a rail car contract violated federal law and “Buy America” requirements intended to promote American employment. To qualify for federal funds on the North and Southeast lines, the FTA said, Metro must cancel its contract with a Spanish company, Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles, and solicit new proposals for a purchase involving up to $205 million in federal money. Meanwhile, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is pushing for all federal rail contracts to adhere to Buy American provisions, with “comparable mandates for highways.” (Though obviously this doesn’t apply to the cars running on them, and I’d imagine that the physical properties of asphalt and concrete favor local highway construction companies anyway.) These mandates have had some success in bringing manufacturing home – for the first time in 60 years streetcars are being built in America – but I have to wonder, at what cost? Just something to think about when people try to argue that transit is too expensive to ever be viable. Edit: As a few commenters have pointed out, “Buy American” is much older than the Obama administration, and indeed dates back to at least 1982, although I’m curious as to how domestic vs. foreign procurement decisions have changed since then, as the law allows for quite a few waivers.

Lazy link list

by Stephen Smith Behold, a list of links that’s turned into a list of short paragraphs: 1. The greater DC area is considering a “massive new toll system” – 1,650 miles of “variably priced” lanes – along with a “500-mile rapid transit bus system” along the toll roads (in my opinion, a BRT would be a much better idea within the city). Of course, the devil’s in the details – “the plan does not suggest actual toll rates,” and the head of the task force admits “he wasn’t sure if there could ever be enough public and political backing to push the plan forward.” 2. (Legal!) private commuter vans have started running in New York City along canceled bus routes on Monday. The city has chosen one operator for each of the five old bus routes taking part in the program, to be phased in over the next two weeks. No word on whether it was the TLC that limited it to one company per route or whether only one applied. After being rehired by the MTA, the workers from TUW Local 100 retracted their bid for one of the contracts. 3. Chicago suburb Evanston has legalized food trucks, while in the Second City itself they’re still practically illegal (no cooking, cutting, or prep of any kind allowed – just serving food that was made elsewhere). 4. Canada, too, has a weak street food scene according to the Toronto Star food editor. The city is taking very tentative steps toward liberalization – it approved less than two dozen new trucks out of almost 800 applicants, with health regulations that look pretty onerous to me. 5. Only 4% of the Seattle DOT’s budget comes from gas taxes, according to one blog. To be honest I find this number suspiciously low, and I’d […]

Enforced price ceilings on private parking lots

by Stephen Smith I wrote last week about a tendency in developing Asian countries to emulate the most anti-market Western planning policies, but I didn’t realize it was this bad. Paul Barter writes: Would it surprise you to know that some cities control the price of parking even for private-sector off-street parking operations? Beijing, Guangzhou, Hanoi and Jakarta do control parking prices, so I assume the practice is common throughout China, Indonesia and Vietnam. Obviously, the “controlling” is a price cap, not a price minimum, and Barter makes a convincing case that the rates are indeed below the market price. I don’t recall ever hearing about price controls on private parking in the West, but it looks like the urge to come up with new ways to cater to car owners is universal. I should add that Paul Barter’s new blog Reinventing Parking is a must-read for anyone interested in parking policy. He’s based in Singapore and writes a lot about Southeast Asia and China, and has another more general blog called Reinventing Urban Transport.

Internalizing positive transit externalities

by Stephen Smith The Wall Street Journal ran an article a few days ago claiming that the MTA’s recent NYC transit cuts have lowered real estate prices along train and bus lines that have been axed. While it’s not a quantitative study, the anecdotes are compelling: “The buyer who buys in Astoria is looking for a cheaper price and to get into Manhattan quickly,” said Ms. Palmos, adding that she is having the same problem with a condominium building in Upper Ditmars, north of Astoria. Apartments there that she said would have easily sold for $500,000 with the express bus nearby are now languishing on the market at prices about $420,000. ” ‘How far is it to the train?’ That’s the first thing people ask me,” said Charles Sciberras of Realty Executives Today, a longtime Astoria broker. “The closer to the train the higher the demand… Two to three blocks away from transportation is very easy for me to rent.” […] “The best areas in Brooklyn have great transportation into the city—the most expensive neighborhood in Brooklyn is Brooklyn Heights—you can get just about anywhere in the city easily. You go out into where there is less transportation, the prices go down,” Mr. Giordano said. “It’s one of the many emotional decisions that people make that can add or detract value from real estate.” What’s most striking to me is that a simple express bus route can raise prices by $80,000 for a single apartment. Multiply this by the thousands of apartments along the bus route and it appears that the lost value from the cut bus route ought to exceed, by orders of magnitude, the cost of maintaining the route. But of course, since the MTA doesn’t see a penny of the value it creates, it isn’t surprising that […]

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