On Marginal Revolution today, Tyler Cowen responded to several questions from a commenter, Celestus, including one that more and more Americans are asking: “I’m a remote worker. Why should I live in a city? Heck, why should I live in a suburb?” Tyler’s answer was provocative: “You live in a city for … [Read more...]
New empirical evidence that parking minimums encourage sprawl
by Stephen Smith Although we at Market Urbanism are big fans of Donald Shoup's work on parking minimums, we have to admit that rigorous econometric evidence that parking minimums mandate more parking than the market would otherwise supply has been a bit lacking. Randal O'Toole at The Antiplanner … [Read more...]
HSR Urbanists: “We Are All O’Tooles Now”
I probably won't make any friends today, but now I’ve read one too many urbanist (many who’s ideas I usually respect) use unsound logic to support high speed rail. This argument often includes something like this: “…and furthermore, highways and airports don’t come close to paying for themselves, … [Read more...]
Urban[ism] Legend: Positive NPV Infrastructure
As Washington debates how many hundreds-of-billions of the nearly trillion-dollar stimulus will go towards infrastructure or to other spending/tax cut schemes, pundits claim that spending billions on "shovel ready" public works projects can effectively create jobs that will lead to recovery. As … [Read more...]
Abolition of Density Restrictions Would be Great for NYC In The Long Run
Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution asks a great question: How good would the abolition of zoning in New York City be? He argues that zoning restrictions prevent Manhattan from being a "forest of skyscrapers" such as Sao Paulo. Many of Manhattan's skyscrapers are much taller than typical Sao Paulo … [Read more...]