1. This week at Market Urbanism Episode 1 of the Market Urbanism podcast came out this week.  Nolan Gray plans to release new episodes bi-weekly.  The RSS feed is http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:236686274/sounds.rss You can currently find the podcast on Soundcloud and PlayerFM. It will be available within the next few days on iTunes, Stitcher, and TuneIn. If there are other podcasting services you would like me to plug the RSS feed into, please let me know in the comment section below. Cities And The Growth Of Our Collective Brain by Emily Hamilton Sandy Ikeda describes the entrepreneur’s environment as the “action space.” Today, an action space could be in a suburban home for an entrepreneur who creates a digital product that’s sold online. While action space doesn’t necessarily need to be a place of high density, this face-to-face element remains a key part of the world’s most productive action spaces. Economist Sandy Ikeda, a previous MU contributor, is back. Here’s the first of what will be weekly content, published every Tuesday at 10am eastern standard time–How The Housing Market Works In other words, it’s not the entrepreneurs, developers, architects, and construction companies that build very expensive housing in cities like New York that drives up housing prices! Indeed, those people are responding to what they believe buyers are willing to pay, and if they are prevented from building those units the result will be higher prices for everybody. And if you observe housing prices rise despite increasing supply, that probably indicates demand is currently increasing faster than supply. Prices, however, would have been even higher were the government to undertake policies that restricted supply. 2. Where’s Scott? Scott Beyer is spending his last night tomorrow in Austin.  Then he’ll spend a couple days in San Antonio, before leaving Texas. His Forbes article this week […]

  1. This week at Market Urbanism Buses and Trains: The Turtle and the Hare? by Asher Meyers With buses a relatively safe, cheap and green form of travel, the wisdom of the government favoring trains at great public expense is dubious. This isn’t to say that trains are bad and buses are good—to each his own. But given the trade-offs involved, buses cannot be dismissed as inferior and obsolete—in the real world, budgets are limited and prices matter, so a small sacrifice of time and comfort is worth the savings. Parking Requirements Increase Traffic And Rents. Let’s Abolish Them. by Brent Gaisford Let’s get rid of parking minimums and allow new apartments to be built either without parking, or the reduced amount of parking preferred by developers. People without parking are less likely to drive, and less driving means less traffic. Plus, we’ll be one step closer to reducing our stratospheric rents. 2. Where’s Scott? Scott Beyer is in Austin. His two Forbes articles this week were about how Washington, DC’s Zoning Regulations Target ‘Fast Casual’ Restaurants and Tokyo’s Affordable Housing Strategy: Build, Build, Build The city had 142,417 housing starts in 2014, which was “more than the 83,657 housing permits issued in the state of California (population 38.7m), or the 137,010 houses started in the entire country of England (population 54.3m).” Compare this with the roughly 20,000 new residential units approved annually in New York City, the 23,500 units started in Los Angeles County, and the measly 5,000 homes constructed in 2015 throughout the entire Bay Area. Scott’s previous article on Austin’s rail transit, already well-cited by local media, got additional coverage in the American Spectator. 3. At the Market Urbanism Facebook Group: Adam Hengels on Stark Truth Radio with Robert Stark Ahmed Shaker posted videos of pedestrian and street traffic in […]

  1. This week at Market Urbanism Does Home-sharing Create Negative Externalities? by Michael Lewyn Homeowners’ fear of being overrun by “transient” renters is based on an outmoded picture of urban life. In a rural area where most people are born and die in the same town, a fear of “transients” may make sense- but urban life is already highly transient. In renter-dominated blocks, people move in and out every year, so transience is already the norm. 2. Where’s Scott? Scott Beyer has, starting tomorrow, one week left in Austin. Tomorrow he’s visiting the southwestern Texas town of San Angelo. His two Forbes articles were about a Houston builder constructing the nation’s largest micro-unit project and Why Austin Needs to Unleash Sixth Street These noise complaints follow the same rationale as complaints now routinely made about new housing, offices or retail. That is, people move into urban areas thinking they will enjoy the benefits of greater density and culture; but when those qualities prove inconvenient, they try to squelch them. Scott’s work was also splashed all over Austin’s local news this week. He did two TV appearances–to discuss the city’s rail transit line and safety on sixth street–and was cited about these issues in the Austin American-Statesman, the Austin Business Journal, Curbed Austin and Austin.com (among other publications). 3. At the Market Urbanism Facebook Group: Ahmed Shaker reports his experiences of Chuadanga, Bangladesh and finds it dense, bustling, full of mixed-uses, and private transportation options are plentiful. Shanu Athiparambath wrote Why Do People Love Their Cities But Hate Urban Living? Todd Litman wrote: Funding Multi-Modalism at Planetizen via Rocco Fama and Christopher Robotham: Donald Shoup and Aaron Renn on the City Journal podcast via Mark Frazier: Does Elon Musk Understand Urban Geometry? via Matt Robare: City taxes as urban growth policies: choosing the taxes that get you […]

  1. This week at Market Urbanism Does President Obama Have A ‘Regionalism’ Agenda? by Scott Beyer Such policies represent less a turn towards socialism, than one away from the nation’s existing socialized paradigm favoring suburbs, wherein housing regulations restrict dense infill development, while the public foots the costs of state highways, local roads, and other sprawl infrastructure. Obama, for all of his supposedly urban bias, has not been immune to extending this paradigm; for example, his stimulus package, writes economist Ed Glaeser, disproportionately benefited low-density states with low unemployment. 100 Years After Zoning In New York City, Government Dominates Land Use by Vince Graham Zoning is segregation – not only of land uses deemed incompatible, but of people deemed “undesirable.” Progressives behind New York City’s 1916 zoning ordinance regarded immigrants moving into northern cities from Europe and the South as “undesirable.” NIMBYs Outdo YIMBYs In Organizing Ability by Krishan Madan The reason boils down to the classic problem of concentrated costs and dispersed benefits: the beneficiaries of new housing are scattered, while those who benefit from a housing shortage–and thus higher prices–are concentrated. These organizational skills enable NIMBYs to dominate the discussion. 2. Where’s Scott? Scott Beyer spent his 3rd week in Austin. His two Forbes articles were Dallas And Houston: Centers For Economic Development and Austin’s Commuter Rail Is A Monument To Government Waste In 2014, the rail line had an operating deficit of $12.6 million. The upfront capital costs of $140 million, when amortized at 2% over 30 years, creates an additional $6.2 million annual cost to taxpayers. Add these two sums up, and then divide them by the line’s number of annual unlinked trips—763,551—and the per-trip subsidy works out to $24.62. 3. At the Market Urbanism Facebook Group: A Market Urbanism podcast with Nolan Gray?  Yes, it’s coming, and some hints leak […]