The Manhattan Institute, a conservative (by New York standards) think tank, recently published a survey of New York residents; a few items are of interest to urbanists. A few items struck me as interesting.One question (p.8) asked "If you could live anywhere, would you live..." in your current … [Read more...]
Protectionism Is Already Harming American Workers And Cities
Both Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and New York reality television personality Donald Trump have based their presidential campaigns in part on the issue of trade. Both of them oppose free trade policies like the North American Free Trade Agreement and the pending Tran Pacific Partnership, arguing … [Read more...]
Urban[ism] Legend: Transportation is a Public Good
In a recent post, commenter Jeremy H. helped point out that the use of the term "public good" is grossly abused in the case of transportation. Even Nobel economists refer to roads as "important examples of production of public goods," ( Samuelson and Nordhaus 1985: 48-49). I'd like to spend a … [Read more...]
Private Buses: Econtalk Takes A Second look at Santiago
Back a couple years ago, I noted an Econtalk podcast with Russell Roberts and Duke University Professor Mike Munger on the private bus system in Santiago, Chile. This week's episode starts with Munger's update on the Santiago transportation system after visiting for three weeks and spending a lot … [Read more...]
Matt Yglesias fails to make the right case against highways
Matt Yglesias is one of the best mainstream bloggers on land use/transportation that I know of. As one blogger (who I don't recall right now) once said, his urban planning and transportation posts could be blogs in their own right. However, it's puzzling that in an article for Cato Unbound, he … [Read more...]
Krugman: Stranded in Suburbia
Paul Krugman wrote an op-ed this morning how the US living and transportation patterns will not cope with high oil prices as well as European cities: Changing the geography of American metropolitan areas will be hard. For one thing, houses last a lot longer than cars. Long after today’s S.U.V.’s … [Read more...]