by Stephen SmithAlthough we at Market Urbanism are big fans of Donald Shoup's work on parking minimums, we have to admit that rigorous econometric evidence that parking minimums mandate more parking than the market would otherwise supply has been a bit lacking. Randal O'Toole at The Antiplanner … [Read more...]
Must Read: The Demand Curve for Sprawl Slopes Downward
Sandy Ikeda's latest article at FEE's "The Freeman" is a great summary of the libertarian sprawl debate.There has been a lot of Internet chatter lately about what libertarians ought to think about urban sprawl and its causes, including pieces by Kevin Carson, Austin Bramwell, Randal O’Toole, and … [Read more...]
O’Toole Under More Fire
At Streetsblog, Ryan Avent presented a scorching attack on the most notorious free-market impostor - Randal O’Toole: Taking Liberties With the Facts for his consistent hypocrisy: The Cato Institute's Randal O’Toole gets under the skin of many of those interested in building a more rational and … [Read more...]
Are You a Wright or Friedman Urbanist?
In a post blogger Eric Orozco called, ‘forerunner candidate for "most incisive blog post" of the year,’ Daniel Nairn of Discovering Urbanism discussed the seemingly conflicted camps of libertarianism when it comes to Urbanism. His observations are based upon the comments in the Volokh article on … [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...]
How Pricing Tolls Right Eliminates Congestion
Chris Bradford over at Austin Contrarian has been making some solid points in favor of congestion pricing. (here, here, here and here) Chris’s core argument in favor of congestion tolling is that: congestion pricing does more than relieve congestion. Congestion pricing tells us when a road needs … [Read more...]
The Nation’s mass transit hypocrisy
by Stephen SmithI was heartened to see an article about the need for mass transit in the pages of The Nation, though I was severely disappointed by the magazine's own hypocrisy and historical blindness. The article is in all ways a standard left-liberal screed against the car and for mass … [Read more...]