by Stephen Smith The other day I put up a post detailing the restrictions that small-scale restaurants and food carts face, but I should mention that grocery stores and supermarkets also face similar restrictions. Like restrictions on restaurants, they end hitting poor, urban, black … [Read more...]
Deregulating food
by Stephen Smith Urban planners like to discuss heavy things – roads, buildings, cars, trains. Food, though an integral part of humans' lives, generally doesn't enter into the equation as more than a footnote. This may be because food service is governed by different departments than buildings, … [Read more...]
Exporting (sub)urbanism: Kuala Lumpur and the communist world
by Stephen Smith Adam Martin at William Easterly's development blog Aid Watch has a post up warning about the tendency among developing nations to adopt Western styles wholesale, even if such styles are not even efficient in their countries of origin. He posits this as a sort of developmental … [Read more...]
Toronto’s new zoning code
by Stephen Smith Matt Yglesias points to an article about Toronto's new zoning code. The story is short on details, although the lowering of parking minimums near transit and overall simplification of the code seem like appealing features to Market Urbanists. I did, however, find a blog post … [Read more...]
Parking round-up
by Stephen Smith At the risk of beating the parking theme deader than the Ground Zero Mosque, here are some recent parking-related stories published around the world: The NYC DOT's Park Smart program has been called a success in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, and officials are … [Read more...]
Why does the Infrastructurist hate libertarians so much?
by Stephen Smith Among urban planners, libertarianism gets a pretty bad rap. Melissa Lafsky at the Infrastructurist goes so far as to call libertarianism "an enemy of infrastructure," and dismisses entirely the idea that private industry can build infrastructure with a single hyperlink – to a … [Read more...]
Shoupistas take Los Angeles
by Stephen Smith Donald Shoup and his arguments about free and underpriced parking have been getting quite a bit of press recently, and it looks like Shoup's hometown of Los Angeles has surpassed San Francisco (with its SFpark initiative) as the largest city in America to adopt some of his … [Read more...]
Even Midtown Manhattan not immune to anti-density NIMBYism
by Stephen Smith In general, I think of Manhattan below Central Park as perhaps the freest place in America in terms of land use restrictions. There are no minimum parking regulations, zoning variances are relatively easy to get, and FAR restrictions are relatively generous. Historical … [Read more...]