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...]
Redistribution (a follow up)
I threw up Friday's Redistribution post somewhat hastily during my break, but there isn't much more that I haven't said before. As a follow-up, I'd like to tie it in with some other interesting reads. Ryan Avent at The Bellows agreed with Yglesias' post and added: Anyway, I saw in Google reader … [Read more...]
Private Roads Work
Bart Frazier wrote a brief article for the Future of Freedom Foundation on private roads. He begins by discussing how most Americans remain strongly opposed to privately owned roads, while at the same time many have warmed to private education, medicine, and social security. This first part of the … [Read more...]
Another Angle on Planning in Houston
Brian Phillips at Live Oaks contacted me regarding the recent post by Stephen Smith on planning in Houston. Brian is a long time opponent of land use restrictions and defender of property rights in Houston. Brian has a different point of view on the subject, and has written a post on his blog, … [Read more...]
Yes, Virginia, government roads really are government subsidized, and no, they don’t approximate freed-market outcomes
Recently, I came accross an article by Charles Johnson, who blogs at Rad Geek. The article had linked to a Market Urbanism post about how user fees and gas taxes fall well short of funding road use in the US. Charles' article further debunks the Urbanism Legend asserted by free-market imposters … [Read more...]
Weekend Reading: Jane Jacobs, Agglomeration, Farms, NIMBY Songs
During my early college studies in Architecture and Urban Design, I became loosely familiar with the ideas of Jane Jacobs, one of the most celebrated urbanist intellectuals. Sanford Ikeda's FEE lectures [mp3] have inspired me to learn more about Jane Jacobs from a Free Market Urbanism point of view. … [Read more...]
Should the Government Build the Cars or the Roads?
I tend to agree that there is some hypocrisy in the conservative/libertarian world when it comes to transportation, which is part of the reason I started this blog. A more free-market transporation system would certainly lead to a more urban land use pattern; something between pre-auto, … [Read more...]