Brendan Crain at Where tipped me off to a great post by Ryan Avent at The Bellows. Here's a little snippet of Shortage:For whatever reason, we’re not built to naturally internalize negative externalities. When riding on a crowded highway, no one (no non-economist, at any rate) curses the … [Read more...]
Urban[ism] Legend: Creating Jobs With Infrastructure
This post is part of an ongoing series featured on Market Urbanism called Urbanism Legends. The Urbanism Legends series is intended to expose many of the myths about development and Urban Economics. (it's a play on the term: “Urban Legends” in case you didn’t catch that)Last week … [Read more...]
Cul-de-sacs – Privatize ’em
Daniel Nairn at Discovering Urbanism brings up a great point about cul-de-sacs. Are they public goods, or truly unnecessary "socialism in its most extreme form"?Take the standard cul-de-sac that serves a handful of households. The purpose of this design is to exclude the general public from … [Read more...]
Tolling NY’s East River Bridges Back on The Table?
[flickr: darren bryden]Congestion pricing schemes, touted as environmentally-responsible at the time of $4 gas, were defeated in New York City last Spring. However, as the market turmoil threatens to wreak havoc on tax revenues, fiscal necessity has lured New York State and New York City … [Read more...]
Matt Yglesias fails to make the right case against highways
Matt Yglesias is one of the best mainstream bloggers on land use/transportation that I know of. As one blogger (who I don't recall right now) once said, his urban planning and transportation posts could be blogs in their own right. However, it's puzzling that in an article for Cato Unbound, he … [Read more...]
Happy Park(ing) Day 2008
I guess I must not be hip enough to have known about this beforehand, but there's a very interesting citywide event happening here in New York today called Park(ing) Day. All throughout New York City, people are reclaiming parking spaces for their street-side enjoyment. It's a very novel idea that … [Read more...]
Another On “Conservatives” and Urbanism
While I sympathize with the theme and agree with regards to roadway spending and "conservative" hypocrisy, a recent article in the progressive The American Prospect takes a narrow-minded view of politics and urbanism, while throwing around broad generalizations about evolution and global warming to … [Read more...]
Bike Sharing
My Other Bike is a Public Transportation System by Greg Beato at Reason.com:A bike delivers a strong sense of autonomy, too—stronger even than a car in many ways. It doesn't, for example, require a license, registration, insurance. You aren't beholden to routes or schedules. You go where you … [Read more...]