Urbanist and YIMBY Twitter had a field day dunking on Nathan J. Robinson, whose essay in his publication Current Affairs (yesterday's tagline: "the one thing left that isn't disappointing") called for building new cities in California.The essay was a typical of the "anti-anti-NIMBY" genre: he … [Read more...]
Where investors invest
One argument I have run across recently is that the high cost of housing is caused by mysterious corporate investors are buying up real estate and forcing up the cost.The stupidest version of this argument is that investors are hoarding all the real estate. Why is it stupid? Because … [Read more...]
The “outer boroughs” myth
One argument against bus lanes, bicycle lanes, congestion pricing, elimination of minimum parking requirements, or indeed almost any transportation improvement that gets in the way of high-speed automobile traffic is that such changes to the status quo might make sense in the Upper West Side, but … [Read more...]
Getting Hasidim and cars wrong- and what we can learn from this
I am currently reading A Fortress in Brooklyn, a (mostly) fine book about the relationship between Williamsburg's Satmar Hasidim and real estate policy.One chapter discusses Satmar opposition to bike lanes in their neighborhood, and suggests that one cause of this opposition might be that … [Read more...]
Confounding Diversity with Segregation Again
In July, I showed that an otherwise careful group of researchers at the Othering and Belonging Institute were using a measure of statistical racial segregation that confounds diversity with segregation. Briefly, regions with more variety in the racial makeup of their neighborhoods will show up as … [Read more...]
Book review: Last Harvest
In the standard urban growth model, a circular city lies in a featureless agricultural plain. When the price of land at the edge of the city rises above the value of agricultural land, “land conversion” occurs. In the real world, we’re more likely to call it “development” and it is, of course, a lot … [Read more...]
Is Diversity “Segregation”?
Headlines last month proclaimed that “Cities Have Grown More Diverse, And More Segregated, Since the 90s.” The headlines originate in the key findings of a new, detailed study from the Othering and Belonging Institute (OBI) at UC Berkeley. The study leans heavily on a relatively new metric – the … [Read more...]
Why rents aren’t keeping up with house prices
Global house prices have been out of control for quite some time. This has helped to reduce economic growth, increase unemployment and was even diagnosed as the greatest cause of inequality in the developed world in a 2016 paper by Matthew Rognlie. However, rents have failed to show the same … [Read more...]