President Trump has threatened to withhold all federal funds from so-called sanctuary cities--municipal governments that do not enlist their police departments in the president's mass deportation plan. If he makes good on his threat, cities that insist on maintaining their sanctuary status can … [Read more...]
Are “Charter Cities” a Solution?
Stanford economist Paul Romer has proposed an intriguing concept: the “charter city.” A charter city is a newly created city governed by a country other than the one within whose borders it exists. Its residents would remain citizens of the home country. Romer offers Hong Kong as an example when … [Read more...]
Private Neighborhoods And The Transformation Of Local Government
Urban Institute Press • 2005 • 494 pages • $32.50 paperback In Private Neighborhoods and the Transformation of Local Government, Robert H. Nelson effectively frames the discussion of what minimal government might look like in terms of personal choices based on local knowledge. He looks at the … [Read more...]
Collective Action Problems Are Similar For Land Use And Schools
I just read a law review article complaining that some white areas in integrated southern counties were trying to secede from integrated school systems (thus ensuring that the countywide systems become almost all-black while the seceding areas get to have white schools), and it occurred to me that … [Read more...]
‘Who better to determine local needs than property owners and concerned citizens themselves?’
The Cato Institute’s Vanessa Brown Calder is skeptical of the Obama administration’s suggestion that state governments can play a role in liberalizing land-use regulation, a policy area usually dominated by local governments. In an otherwise thoughtful post responding to a variety of proposals, she … [Read more...]
NIMBYism as an Argument Against Urbanism
In his new book The Human City, Joel Kotkin tries to use NIMBYism as an argument against urbanism. He cites numerous examples of NIMBYism in wealthy city neighborhoods, and suggests that these examples rebut "the largely unsupported notion that ever more people want to move 'back to the city'." … [Read more...]
Supply and Demand: A Response to 48hills
In a recent piece published by 48hills, former Berkeley planning commissioner Zelda Bronstein takes aim at...well...too many things for me to succinctly recount in detail. So instead of attempting to respond to every single argument littered throughout her 7,000 word article, I’ll focus on the big … [Read more...]
Are States Really The Solution To Urban Mismanagement?
Recently Stephen Eide, writing in City Journal, argued that states could run cities better than cities can run themselves, by offering an antidote to the mismanagement gripping many localities (“Caesarism for Cities:, March 2016). In the process, he overlooked the nefarious nature of many … [Read more...]
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