Tag Cuba

Market Urbanism MUsings March 4, 2016

1. Where’s Scott? Scott Beyer spent his second week in the Oklahoma City area, finding a place in the relatively wealthy northern college suburb of Edmond, OK. This week he wrote for Governing about New Orleans‘ music noise issue, and profiled a man in Forbes who escaped Cuba by raft for Miami. There are over 1.1 million Cuban immigrants in the United States, and even more than other immigrant groups, they have clustered, with over two-thirds living in greater Miami. What unites this group is not dislike of their home country, but the need to leave the Castro brothers’ Communist regime. 2. At the Market Urbanism Facebook Group: Nolan Gray found another great Daniel Hertz article: Great neighborhoods don’t have to be illegal—they’re not elsewhere John Morris shared Donald Shoup‘s contribution to a Washington Post series on cities becoming less car-dependent  (h/t Nolan Gray) John Morris also found a post at Medium calling for repeal of segregationist zoning policies Jeff Fong shared a short podcast interview with Alain Betaud Sandy Ikeda shared Bill Easterly‘s research on the largely unplanned emergence over 400 years of single block in Soho Mark Frasier congratulates Zach Caceras‘ work seeding local reforms at Startup Cities Adam Lang‘s ongoing frustration with urban renewal in his Philadelphia neighborhood which we previously covered 3. Elsewhere: New Geography reposted Nolan Gray’s recent article on Jane Jacob’s Hayekian approach William Fischel will be speaking Tuesday at NYU about his new paper: The Rise of the Homevoters: How OPEC and Earth Day Created Growth-Control Zoning that Derailed the Growth Machine Chris Hagan‘s WBEZ radio piece about population loss in Chicago‘s North Center neighborhood due to restrictive zoning Nick Zaiac wrote Maryland Is an Over-Regulated Disaster: Here’s How to Fix It and published a report at The Maryland Public Policy Institute Commutes in the U.S. are getting longer, reports the Washington Post’s Wonkblog. 4. Stephen […]

More weekend links

1. Cuban dissident blogger (as in, living in Cuba) Yoani Sánchez describes the state of the Cuban real estate market, and discusses new rules that apparently legalize buying and selling houses, though she has her doubts that the government will allow the overt displays of inequality that would undoubtedly occur once the market is liberalized. 2. The NYT Magazine has a profile of a physicist who claims to have mastered the mathematics of the city. Hmm, where have I heard that before? He’s got some positive things to say about cities over suburbs and Joel Kotkin seems to disagree with him (always a plus in my book), but at the end of the day there’s something about him and his context-free pronouncement about “cities” writ large that really rubs me the wrong way. 3. A preservation vs. development story in the NYT about Seoul’s traditional “hanok” houses, with the chief preservationist being a white foreigner who doesn’t approve of interior redesigns or added basements or second stories. Something tells me he proably wouldn’t be a huge fan of my “development as preservation” theory.

Cuba Grants Limited Property Rights to Farmers

Cuba reforms turn to state land Cuba is to put more state-controlled farm land into private hands, in a move to increase the island’s lagging food production. Private farmers who do well will be able to increase their holdings by up to 99 acres (40 hectares) for a 10-year period that can be renewed. Until now, private farmers have only been able to run small areas of land. The BBC’s Michael Voss, in Havana, says this is one of President Raul Castro’s most significant reforms to date. Since the 1959 revolution, some Cubans have been allowed to run small family farms. But most agriculture has been placed in the hands of large, state-owned enterprises. Our correspondent says these have proved highly inefficient – half the land is unused and today Cuba imports more than half its needs. Rising world food prices will cost the country an extra $1bn this year. The presidential decree was published in the country’s Communist Party newspaper, Granma. In it, co-operatives are also allowed to add an unspecified amount of additional land for 25 years, with the possibility of renewing the lease. Grants cannot be transferred or sold to third parties.