My guest this week is Sanford Ikeda, a professor of economics at SUNY Purchase and a visiting scholar at New York University. He has written extensively on urban economics, policy, and planning.Professor Ikeda introduced me to urban economics and urban planning when he gave a … [Read more...]
Archives for September 2016
Urban Design and Social Complexity
This week’s column is drawn from a lecture I gave earlier this year at the University of Southern California on the occasion of the retirement of urban economist Peter Gordon.One of my heroes is the urbanist Jane Jacobs, who taught me to appreciate the importance for entrepreneurial development … [Read more...]
How Houston Regulates Land Use
If you regularly read about cities, you might notice that Texas cities rarely seem to come up. We make cases for why Detroit is definitely coming back—just you wait! We come up with elaborate theories of how cities can become the next Silicon Valley. We spend hours coming up with a solution to New … [Read more...]
Market Urbanism MUsings September 16, 2016
1. This week at Market Urbanism: The “Global Buyers” Argument by Michael LewynThe argument makes sense only when you add the following premise: housing prices can only be high in the presence of huge numbers of rich foreigners. I really don’t see any reason to take this premise … [Read more...]
Airbnb Crowding Out Is A Symptom, Not A Cause Of Housing Shortages
When journalists, NIMBYs, politicians, and activists make claims about Airbnb taking potential full-time housing stock and converting it to leisure space, they operate under the assumption that the housing supply must be fixed. This assumption is half true: By no means must the housing … [Read more...]
Urban[ism] Legend: A Home Is A Good Investment
Despite its poor track record, homeownership is the bad investment idea that never seems to die. Even though the financial crisis revealed the risks that homeowners take on by making highly leveraged purchases, policymakers are still developing new programs to encourage home buying. Both the Clinton … [Read more...]
Visions of Progress: Henry George vs. Jane Jacobs
Henry George and Jane Jacobs each have an enthusiastic following today, including, I’m sure, some readers of The Freeman.For those who might not know, Henry George is the late-19th-century American intellectual best known for his proposal of a “single tax” from which he believed the … [Read more...]
Home-Sharing and Housing Supply
One common argument against Airbnb and other home-sharing companies is that they reduce housing supply by taking housing units off the long-term market.* As I have written elsewhere, I don't think home-sharing affects housing supply enough to matter. But even leaving aside the empirical question of … [Read more...]