Lydia DePillis wrote the Washington City Paper's cover story on the case for Congress overturning DC's height limit, which should be very familiar to readers of this blog. It's got some interesting history in it (DC's height limit was apparently influenced by George Washington's personal aesthetics, … [Read more...]
The economics of redevelopment and the shape of socialist cities
Earlier today I read an article by Daniel Garst about Bejing's awkward population distribution that reminded me of a journal article about the general shape of socialist cities that I read a while back. Garst talks about Beijing being a "circus tent" when it comes to density, with population … [Read more...]
Darien, CT gets sued by the DOJ over inclusionary zoning
The New York Times has an interesting article about a Justice Department probe into Darien, CT's local inclusionary zoning rules. Inclusionary zoning means essentially that multi-unit developments have to offer a portion of the project as "affordable housing," which invariably means charging … [Read more...]
Rothbard the Urbanist Part 5: Diversity and Discrimination
This 5th installment of the Rothbard Series dovetails well with the most recent post on segregation by guest blogger, Stephen Smith, as well as a post back in July over at Austin Contrarian. If you haven’t kept up with our discussion, Murray Rothbard’s classic For A New Liberty can be … [Read more...]
Do We Need “New Urbanism” To Fix “Unwalkable Sprawl”?
At Volokh, Ilya Somin discusses a recent piece in the American Prospect (also linked from here) that favors “New Urbanism” to prevent “unwalkable” sprawl. Somin favors “voting with your feet” as the preferred method of satisfying location preferences. Unfortunately, voting options have … [Read more...]
Rothbard the Urbanist Part 1: Public Education’s Role in Sprawl and Exclusion
I’ve been meaning to address the public education system’s complex role in land use patterns, and found that Murray Rothbard does a better job in his 1973 manifesto, For a New Liberty than I ever could. In summary, locally-funded public education is an engine of geographical segregation, which … [Read more...]
Undead Ideas: Rent Control
In these days of economists constantly debating the right way to revive the economy, it seems like there is no way to find consensus among economists. Economists don’t spend much time debating the issues they agree on, and to them, rent control is about as dead an issue as the earth revolving … [Read more...]
My Article at FreePo on the Resurrection of Rent Control
The Orange County Register’s new site, Freedom Politics just posted an article I wrote for them on rent control. Here’s a snippet: In these days of economists constantly debating the right way to revive the economy, it seems like there is no way to find consensus among economists. … [Read more...]