You can also see the talk I gave the same day:

Pro: When you speak to architects as a practitioner, they call it a “master class”, which is very flattering.

Cons: Don’t try to follow Alain Bertaud.

The post Master Classes appeared first on Market Urbanism.

It’s great to see Reason taking notice of the YIMBY movement, and we’d love to see more attention paid to urbanism at libertarian sites.  Three of us at Market Urbanism attended the first nationwide YIMBY conference in Boulder that the video mentions, and we’ll be sharing our thoughts on the conference soon.

(h/t Jake Thomas at the Market Urbanism facebook group)

The post ReasonTV on SF’s YIMBY Movement appeared first on Market Urbanism.

Hank Williams, Jr. thinks that you’ll only get mugged if you go downtown.  If you keep watching, you find that this is exactly what happened to the narrator’s friend!

Dave Grisman didn’t get mugged, but still found himself impoverished:

Taylor Swift, on the other hand, can portray a positive side of cities: cosmopolitan places to escape bad relationships, meet new people with different life experiences, and grow your dreams.

In White Horse, she reminds herself that small towns are difficult places for dreams to come true:

In Fifteen, she describes a process where girls growing up in small towns can be encouraged not to dream big dreams (although she has moved on to bigger, better things, as she reminds herself):

In Mean, she holds out the hope for city living as a way of escaping abusive relationships holding her back:

When she finally reaches the big city (New York), she is overwhelmed with the possibilities. People come from all over the world, feel free to explore their sexual identities, remake themselves, and try to achieve their dreams:

Real-life Taylor Swift is a fantastic example of somebody who achieved her dreams by moving to a specialized city, Nashville. The Music City has grown and evolved as a cultural and economic engine in country music that allows young people like herself to meet like-minded, skilled people to collaborate with. Good for Taylor Swift for recognizing that the same process means cities can allow for personal growth in other dimensions, by exposing people to others from all over the world and all walks of life.

[Originally published on the blog Austin On Your Feet]

The post Taylor Swift Spurns Country Music’s Longtime Attitude Towards Cities appeared first on Market Urbanism.

…

The post In Defense Of Land Reclamation: It Ain’t All Palm Islands! appeared first on Market Urbanism.

…

The post Why the FRA is Bad for America, in 10 Seconds appeared first on Market Urbanism.

Architecture students at Universidad Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala participated in Professor Gonzalo Melian’s (more on him and his work in future posts) Dynamic Urban Planning Workshop. Obviously very proud of his students, Prof. Melian offered to share his students’ inspiring videos with the readers of Market Urbanism, which you can watch below. Prof. Melian described the course as followed:

The Dynamic urban Planning workshop started this year. It has two parts. One part is theory and the other one is practice. The theory part has 15 sessions (90 min) and it is divided into two parts: Static Urban Planning and Dynamic Urban Planning.

Static Urban Planning is divided into different lectures about: the ontology of cities, what is a static urban planning, the modernist ideas as the beginning, some critics, such as Jane Jacobs, the history of the static urban planning system from 1950 to today and the static urban planning system in theory and practice.

The second part of the course, Dynamic Urban Planning, is divided into different lectures like: the importance of private property rights: the problem of the commons and the problems of the anti-commons; public goods and externalities in cities; the theory of economic goods of cities; the price formation in cities: the importance of free market prices; the theory of monopoly onto cities; entrepreneurship, knowledge and spontaneous order in cities; theory of the impossibility of economic calculation in cities; the capital theory of cities; the economic cycle applies on cities; the expansion of credit without saving as a distortion of cities; charter cities; and looking for free cities.

The practice part is divided into three parts: analysis, dynamic urban planning and dynamic urban design.

And the result is what you are about to watch [and is posted] on the dynamic urban planning blog.

Enjoy!:

GUATEMALA FREE CITY from Diego Saenz on Vimeo.

The post Some Inspiration from Guatemala appeared first on Market Urbanism.

The Unintended Consequences of “Smart Growth” from Mackinac Center on Vimeo.

Update: Here’s what Sandy has to say at thinkmarkets…

The post Video: Sandy Ikeda on The Unintended Consequences of “Smart Growth” appeared first on Market Urbanism.

The game begins in the Stalinian Central Bureau of Traffic Control, where a wrinkly old man pulls you out of your job at the mail room to come save the traffic control system. You are brought to a space command-like control room and put to work setting traffic lights to stop and go. Meanwhile frustrated drivers stuck in the gridlock you create blare their car horns to get your attention, and if their “frustration level” rises too high you fail out of the level. As the road network gets as complicated as four intersections on a square grid, the traffic becomes completely overwhelming and failure is inevitable, but the old man reassures you that they too have failed anyway.

OK, you’ve played the game? If not, don’t go further until you have.

Now that you’ve played the game and failed to control traffic, compare that top-down system with this amazing video a friend sent to me from Cambodia. You’ve gotta see this:

Man, I love this video! I must have watched it a couple dozen times. I keep expecting a crash, in what to me (only being familiar with top-down planned traffic systems) looks like complete chaos. Yet pedestrians, bikes, motorcycles, scooters, rickshaws, and cars all make it to their destinations safely, and probably quicker than in the system in the game above. It must be similar to how capitalism must seem chaotic to people who have always lived in planned economies.

Don’t mistake me as an advocate of a world without traffic signals. I am quite certain that some sort of traffic signaling would likely emerge from a free-market street system. But, my bigger point is that when information is dispersed widely among decision-makers without government monopoly, sustainable solutions emerge from the uncoerced behavior of individual agents over time.

Another article at Infrastructurist discusses the philosophical differences Dutch and American road designs, and gives an example:

A fascinating example is a major–20,000 cars a day!–intersection in the Dutch city of Drachten that used to look a lot a typical American intersection, with lots of bright paint and traffic signals and enormous signs telling you what and what not to do. Traffic planners tore that stuff out and went naked, just putting down a roundabout in the center. The sidewalks even disappeared as distinct structures. Everyone figured it out though. Fatalities at the intersection dropped markedly, as did travel times.

Also read Tom Vanderbilt: News for Traffic Signal Manufacturers

The post Urban[ism] Legend: Traffic Planning appeared first on Market Urbanism.