Last week I wrote a post highlighting how important it is for major cities to have places for low-income people to live. Without the opportunity to live in vibrant, growing cities, our nation's poor can't take advantage of the employment and educational opportunities cities offer. My post … [Read more...]
Archives for March 2016
Vouchers, Sprawl and Trade-Offs
Currently, the American public school system is a sprawl-generating machine: urban public schools are less appealing to middle-class parents than suburban public schools, causing parents to move to suburbia.This result arises from school assignment laws: because students must attend school in … [Read more...]
Market Urbanism MUsings March 25, 2016
1. This week at Market Urbanism: Emily Washington described The Need For Low-Quality Housing in America's most desirable cities.People of very little means could afford to live in cities with the highest housing demand because they lived in boarding houses, residential hotels, and low-quality … [Read more...]
Rothbard The Urbanist Part 7: Pricing Highways
Surprise!! I've had the intent to wrap-up the Rothbard The Urbanist series for a long time, and it's been sitting on my todo list for over 6 years.I want to thank Jeffrey Tucker, then at mises.org, and now at FEE.org and liberty.me for enthusiastically granting permission to reprint excerpts … [Read more...]
The need for low-quality housing
The market urbanism axiom -- permitting housing supply to increase is key to achieving affordable housing -- has been made recently by Rick Jacobus at Shelterforce and Daniel Hertz at City Observatory. However both argue that even with an increasing supply, low-income people will need aid in order … [Read more...]
Market Urbanism MUsings March 18, 2016
1. This week at Market Urbanism: Nolan Gray's latest post, Liberate the Garage!: Autonomous Cars and the American DreamAt present, zoning laws effectively prohibit entrepreneurs from using their garages for business. In many Americans cities, hiring employees, hosting visitors, putting up … [Read more...]
Rent Control: A No-Win
In an otherwise excellent article on NIMBYism and luxury housing, affordable housing consultant Rick Jacobus writes: “economist Anthony Downs reviewed the published studies and found that while 'stringent' rent control imposed over a very long time had reduced private apartment construction in the … [Read more...]
Liberate the Garage!: Autonomous Cars and the American Dream
When it comes to the impact autonomous cars will have on cities, there’s plenty of room for disagreement. Will they increase or decrease urban densities? Will they help with congestion or make it worse? At the same time, there seems to be widespread agreement on at least two things: First, far fewer … [Read more...]