At 4:30 am, alarms on my cellphone and tablet start beeping, just enough out of sync to prompt me to get up and turn them off. By 5:00 am, I riding as a passenger along an unusually sedate New Jersey Turnpike, making friendly conversation with my driver and survey partner to make sure he stays … [Read more...]
Rothbard The Urbanist Part 7: Pricing Highways
Surprise!! I've had the intent to wrap-up the Rothbard The Urbanist series for a long time, and it's been sitting on my todo list for over 6 years.I want to thank Jeffrey Tucker, then at mises.org, and now at FEE.org and liberty.me for enthusiastically granting permission to reprint excerpts … [Read more...]
Private parking contracting giving ‘privatization’ a bad name
In the past Market Urbanism has been lukewarm on parking "privatization" (Adam on Chicago and me on LA), but I'm becoming more and more convinced that it's a bad idea. To start off with, these "privatizations" are actually private contracting schemes – the "owners" are barely even allowed to set … [Read more...]
Private buses make a comeback in NYC
by Stephen SmithTransit activists have been bemoaning recent cuts in the MTA's bus routes throughout New York City, but the cuts may have a silver lining, in particular for market urbanists: they may usher in the return of private buses to the streets of New York City. Private buses (and … [Read more...]
Rothbard The Urbanist Part 6: Traffic Control
Maybe the delay in posts led you to believe the Rothbard Series was complete. The good news is that there are a few more posts to go, and the ones coming up next should be the most interesting to urbanists.If you haven’t kept up with our discussion, Murray Rothbard’s classic For A New Liberty … [Read more...]
Rothbard the Urbanist Part 3: Prevention of Blockades
In the last post, we discussed the first paragraphs of chapter 11 of Murray Rothbard's For A New Liberty. (available free from Mises.org as pdf, web page, and audio book) Those paragraphs discussed the private ownership of all land, including streets and roads. Rothbard clearly and concisely … [Read more...]
Rothbard the Urbanist Part 2: Safe Streets
The recent post, Public Education’s Role in Sprawl and Exclusion generated some interest and fantastic comments. I recommend reading Murray Rothbard's For a New Liberty in its entirety. It is elegant in its consistently radical application of principles. It is available for free from the Mises … [Read more...]
Block vs Poole: The Public-Private Partnership Debate
The Orange County Register’s Freedom Politics website (check out my rent control article FreePo published in March) features articles discussing two differing takes on road privatization from notable scholars Walter Block and Robert Poole. In Robert Poole’s article, he discusses the merits of the … [Read more...]