I was first introduced to Jane Jacobs while working as an intern in the Planning Department of my hometown in Colorado. Her work enlightened me to the power of market forces to benefit all city dwellers without government intervention. Since then, I have become fascinated by the urban emergent order that creates our cities.
I graduated with a Masters in economics from George Mason University in 2010 after finishing my undergraduate degree at Goucher College in 2008. While at GMU, I worked as a Research Associate at the university’s Mercatus Center. After a brief time working elsewhere, I returned to the Mercatus Center to write for Neighborhood Effects about state and local policy issues.
Contact me at [email protected]
Market Urbanism
Liberalizing cities | From the bottom up
Market Urbanism is proud to welcome Michael Nahas as a new writer who will bring an Austin perspective to the blog. Michael’s Twitter handle is @MichaelDNahas, and he also blogs at City Econ. Here’s a short interview we did over email. Emily: How did you become interested in cities? Michael: A coincidence back in 2018 […]
The post Welcome Michael Nahas appeared first on Market Urbanism.
Legislators in Colorado and Tennessee have introduced bills modeled on Arizona’s Private Property Rights Protection Act, a law that requires municipal governments to compensate landowners when new land use regulations make land less valuable. Both states already have areas with housing affordability problems due in part to land use regulations that are already on the […]
The post Protecting Housing Affordability by Protecting the Right to Build Housing appeared first on Market Urbanism.
Arlington County policymakers have issued a call for ideas on improving housing availability and affordability. If you’d like to submit your own ideas, you can do so here through the rest of the day. The ideas that I submitted are below. Arlington County is a national model for transit-oriented development. Permitting dense, multifamily housing to […]
The post Opening Arlington up to Housing appeared first on Market Urbanism.
A stickplex is a dense residential structure or group of structures built with inexpensive materials and techniques, most commonly wood. Stickplexes use 2,500 square feet of land per unit or less. Stickplexes have per-square-foot construction costs roughly in line with detached houses due to avoidance of costly features like elevators and more expensive construction […]
The post What’s a stickplex? appeared first on Market Urbanism.
In 2015, urban studies professor Anne Haila published a book on Singapore’s land ownership and housing system called Urban Land Rent: Singapore as a Property State. The Singapore housing model has recently been getting some attention for its widespread homeownership and affordability relative to high-cost coastal cities in the United States. Both Haila and, recently, […]
The post The Limits of the Singapore Housing Model appeared first on Market Urbanism.
Elizabeth Warren’s housing bill has received a lot of love from those who favor of land use liberalization. Like Cory Booker’s housing bill, the Warren bill would seek to encourage state and local land use reform using federal grants as an incentive. Warren’s bill would significantly increase funding for the Housing Trust Fund and provide […]
The post Homeownership and the Warren Housing Bill appeared first on Market Urbanism.
Some urbanists have become skeptical about the future of autonomous vehicles even as unstaffed, autonomous taxis are now serving customers in Phoenix and Japan. Others worry that AVs, if they are ever deployed widely, will make cities worse. Angie Schmitt posits that allowing AVs in cities without implementing deliberate pro-urban policies first will exacerbate the […]
The post Three Policies for Making Driverless Cars Work for Cities appeared first on Market Urbanism.
Nashville has enjoyed some of the country’s fastest job growth for several years as healthcare and tech startups have made the city home. Unsurprisingly, this economic boom has coincided with a large increase in population, greater demand for real estate, and rising house prices. But Nashville’s policy environment has moderated price increases relative to what […]
The post Three Lessons from Nashville’s Building Boom appeared first on Market Urbanism.