“Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that’s how we’ve got to live.” –Haruki Murakami I feel lucky to live in Brooklyn Heights. It’s been called New York City’s first suburb. It offers easy access to most parts of Manhattan, thanks to the convergence of several … [Read more...]
Episode 05: Samuel Zipp and Nathan Storring on Vital Little Plans
This week on the Market Urbanism Podcast, I chat with Samuel Zipp and Nathan Storring on the wonderful new volume Vital Little Plans: The Short Works of Jane Jacobs. From Jacobs' McCarthy-era defense of unorthodox thinking to snippets of her unpublished history of humanity, the book is a … [Read more...]
The Invisible City
Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities is a short, often wonderful but consistently enigmatic (at least to me) novel about an extended conversation between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan. Marco tells the Khan a series of tales about fantastical cities he’s perhaps only imagined.I’ve always … [Read more...]
Markets As Cities
Why are a growing number of libertarians fascinated by cities and indeed pinning their hopes for a freer future on cities? Two examples of this just from recent Freeman issues are by Zachary Caceres on startup cities and the winner of the Thorpe-Freeman Blog Contest, Adam Millsap, responding to one … [Read more...]
Econ 101 And The Missing Middle
HUD has released 2015 building permit tallies. Austin’s tallies for 2015:Single Family Units: 2,846 Duplex units: 326 Units in 3-4 unit buildings: 30 Units in 5+ unit buildings: 6,890This bipolar split is typical of American cities. Some cities build more single-family than … [Read more...]
Urban[ism] Legend: A Home Is A Good Investment
Despite its poor track record, homeownership is the bad investment idea that never seems to die. Even though the financial crisis revealed the risks that homeowners take on by making highly leveraged purchases, policymakers are still developing new programs to encourage home buying. Both the Clinton … [Read more...]
Visions of Progress: Henry George vs. Jane Jacobs
Henry George and Jane Jacobs each have an enthusiastic following today, including, I’m sure, some readers of The Freeman.For those who might not know, Henry George is the late-19th-century American intellectual best known for his proposal of a “single tax” from which he believed the … [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...]