Inclusionary zoning is a hot item among urban planners today, and is often seen as a solution to residential segregation and high housing costs. Exact implementations vary, but the general idea is that developers of multi-unit housing projects are encouraged to set aside a certain percentage of … [Read more...]
Archives for December 2010
Mohamed Atta as urban planner, and more from the Middle East
The NYT has an interesting article on urban planning developments in Aleppo, Syria (the largest city in the Levant – bigger than Beirut, Tel Aviv, Damascus, and Amman!), which includes this section about the history of planning in the Middle East, with a development-as-preservation lesson at the … [Read more...]
Systemic Failure on HSR
One of many reasons why high-speed rail in America is doomed, from Systemic Failure: When DB or Renfe or even SNCF needs to buy a high-speed train, they simply call up Siemens (or Alstom or Talgo) and order some trains. Simple as that. Customization consists of painting a logo on the outside, and … [Read more...]
Calling your opponents “socialists” and “un-American” is as American as skyscrapers
It's pretty amusing to me that liberals today are still whining about being called "socialists," considering the charge is at least a century old. Here one example from Robert Fogelson's excellent Downtown chapter on height restrictions around the turn of the century: The Post voiced especially … [Read more...]
Vancouver shows how seeking community amenities from developers can go horribly wrong
A lot of time I hear liberal urbanists claiming that trading development rights for community amenities (I'd definitely include affordable housing mandates here) is a win-win situation, but there's a real danger of killing the goose that laid the golden egg, as appears to be happening in … [Read more...]
DC link list
I didn't mean for these all (except the last one) to be about DC, but it looks like it turned out that way...1. Matt Yglesias on lot occupancy rules in DC. I have a feeling, though, that these are more or less irrelevant in the face of other, stricter limits on density.2. The feds, along … [Read more...]
Japanese transit and what it can teach us
For a libertarian urbanist blogger, I've always felt kind of embarrassed by my lack of knowledge about East Asian transit, considering that it's the only place left on earth with a thriving competitive private transportation market (they even have profitable monorails!). I've heard good things about … [Read more...]
Downtown Brooklyn’s $2 million affordable apartments (correction)
Inclusionary zoning is a bad enough idea, but at least it doesn't cost taxpayers anything directly. But New York State's Housing Finance Agency is taking the worst of both worlds – affordable housing mandates and public subsidies – and plopping them down in new luxury construction in the heart of … [Read more...]