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Liberalizing cities | From the bottom up

“Market Urbanism” refers to the synthesis of classical liberal economics and ethics (market), with an appreciation of the urban way of life and its benefits to society (urbanism). We advocate for the emergence of bottom up solutions to urban issues, as opposed to ones imposed from the top down.

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  • What Should I Read to Understand Zoning?

Where investors invest

February 16, 2022 By Michael Lewyn

One argument I have run across recently is that the high cost of housing is caused by mysterious corporate investors are buying up real estate and forcing up the cost.The stupidest version of this argument is that investors are hoarding all the real estate. Why is it stupid? Because … [Read more...]

Filed Under: housing, Michael Lewyn, NIMBYism, Uncategorized, Urban[ism] Legends Tagged With: financialization, housing, investors

More information about NYC “Billionaire’s Row”

January 6, 2022 By Michael Lewyn

A recent Youtube video on New York City's "Billionares' Row" (a smattering of very expensive buildings at the northern edge of midtown Manhattan) has received over six million views. Much of the video is rather propagandistic: it uses perjorative terms like "loopholes" to describe how the … [Read more...]

Filed Under: housing, Michael Lewyn, NIMBYism Tagged With: billionaires, supertalls

Financialization and housing costs

August 21, 2021 By Michael Lewyn

One common explanation for high rents is something called "financialization." Literally, this term of course makes no sense: any form of investment, good or bad, involves finances.But I think that the most common non-incoherent use of the term is something like this: rich people and … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Economics, housing, Michael Lewyn, NIMBYism, Policy, zoning Tagged With: financialization, housing

contradictory anti-housing arguments

July 2, 2021 By Michael Lewyn

Over the years, I've heard a wide variety of arguments against new housing. One of them is the "mysterious foreign investor" argument. According to this theory, new urban housing will all be bought up by billionaire foreign investors, who will purchase the property and never rent it out, thus … [Read more...]

Filed Under: housing, Michael Lewyn, NIMBYism Tagged With: condos, financialization, housing affordability

How YIMBYs used Ostrom to recruit conservatives

February 10, 2021 By Tom Spencer

A major barrier to the market urbanist’s ability to make the case for building more housing is the question of aesthetics. When you refer to density in cities, it’s easy to picture large brutalist towers and the slum-like conditions that can be seen in much of the developing world. Of course, this … [Read more...]

Filed Under: housing, NIMBYism, planning, Uncategorized, World Tagged With: Ostrom, planning, UK

Even NIMBYs should be YIMBYs

January 28, 2020 By Michael Lewyn

Jeremiah Moss, a New York blogger, just wrote a long article complaining about the bad habits of his new neighbors in the East Village. I suspect many, if not most readers, of his article would think: maybe we need to zone out new housing to keep out the yuppies!But it seems to me that this … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Development, housing, Michael Lewyn, NIMBYism Tagged With: moss

For once I agree with the NIMBYs: please don’t turn my neighborhood into Dubai- because Dubai isn’t dense enough!

December 12, 2019 By Michael Lewyn

One common argument against new housing is that it will turn "[neighborhood at issue] into Dubai." Evidently, some people think Dubai is a hellscape of super-dense skyscapers.In fact, Many Dubai neighborhoods aren't very dense at all.There is one Dubai neighborhood that is more dense than … [Read more...]

Filed Under: housing, Michael Lewyn, NIMBYism, Places & Spaces, World City Profiles Tagged With: Dubai

More evidence that sunlight is no crisis

October 24, 2019 By Michael Lewyn

In my email box today, I received a message from an anti-housing group, touting a study from the localize.city website* on sunlight on New York neighborhoods. The purpose of the study is to show which neighborhoods have the least sunlight.The study found that 27 of the city's allegedly … [Read more...]

Filed Under: housing, Michael Lewyn, NIMBYism, Uncategorized Tagged With: sunlight

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