Market Urbanism

Liberalizing cities | From the bottom up

“Market Urbanism” refers to the synthesis of classical liberal economics and ethics (market), with an appreciation of the urban way of life and its benefits to society (urbanism). We advocate for the emergence of bottom up solutions to urban issues, as opposed to ones imposed from the top down.

Matt Yglesias attacks parking maximums, outs himself as a market urbanist

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Matt Yglesias has been on a roll lately with the urbanism posts, all of which have a heavy “market urbanist” slant, but it’s this post about parking reform in/around Boston (riffing off of this Boston Globe article) that seals the deal for me:

Regulators pushing developers to build less parking than they want is much, much, much better than the near-universal practice of regulators mandating minimum levels of parking. But I do think the message is clearer and the potential political coalition bigger if parking reformers just stick to the idea that this should be left up to the market. Cars are useful, and people who have cars need to park them. So there’s nothing wrong with building parking. But urban space is expensive, and parking spaces take up space, so people should weigh the costs and benefits of building/buying more parking against other possibilities. Getting to market-determined levels of parking construction and parking space pricing would be a huge victory, and it’s not particularly necessary to go beyond that.

I guess the only thing I’d have to add is that while I think these sort of parking maximums and general density-forcing rules are of minor import compared to the massively anti-density status quo, they do give rhetorical ammo to people like Randal O’Toole and other self-proclaimed libertarian types who like to claim that what planners really want is to banish cars entirely from cities. The sad truth is that they’re right – New Urbanism/Smart Growth might have some libertarian issues at heart, but at the end of the day, they’re out to put us all on trains/buses/bikes/our own two feet, not to set the market right. Now again, I think that O’Toole & Co. vastly overestimate the influence of density-forcing regulations, but they do have somewhat of a point.

As a bonus, Matt also reposted an interesting chart that claims that federal housing incentives (mostly subsidies and tax deductions) are massively regressive, acting as a tax on households earning less than $30k/year and a subsidy for those earning more. I can’t vouch for the methodology though – perhaps a commenter could offer some more insight?

  • Daniel

    I don’t know about the methodology behind this graph, but the general idea is that the mortgage interest deduction (the largest federal housing subsidy) is only available to a) homeowners, not renters b) those who file long-form taxes, so households exceeding the standard deduction. Both of these conditions are more likely the wealthier the household is, so the subsidy is regressive. Even IF encouraging homeownership is a worthy federal goal, the subsidy doesn’t even do that very well. Those that benefit are likely to buy homes anyway. And since the influx of money to > 30K (or probably more likely >50K) households all gets poured into boosting home values, those that do not make the bar get pushed further away.

    And we can’t forget the capital gains deduction.

  • Alon Levy

    Although Yglesias frequently gets things wrong, what he says about the mortgage tax credit has been echoed by mainstream economists. Under both Reagan and Bush II, government-sponsored committees of economists studying tax reform recommended dropping the mortgage tax credit; both times, the President overruled their recommendation. I believe expert consensus is that the credit does not increase home ownership (the US has the same home ownership rate as Canada and Britain, where the credit is absent), but instead causes people to spend more money on better housing and less on anything else.

  • Stephen Smith

    Out of curiosity, what urbanism-related things do you think Yglesias gets wrong? Or were you referring to non-urbanism stuff?

  • I actually find it kind of similar to the incentives we give for renewable energy systems. I am working with a client that manages a low income housing complex (HUD) and we wanted to explore PVs given that the incentive cocktail in New York is amazingly attractive. In about 2 minutes it became clear that most of the incentives couldn’t really apply because these guys don’t pay taxes.

    In lieu of a cash-credit based system, the highest percentage of tax dollars are funding the systems for the wealthiest people who arguably need cheaper power the least. However low-income housing folk who could materially benefit from a lower power bill every month, can’t take advantage of the incentives as a non-profit entity. The system seems a bit backwards.

    As an aside, I have no problem representing that stereotype–I am more familiar with Manhattan than other cities, but ultimately having cars off the island would only make the place better. The only vehicles that need to be here are cabs, delivery, service/municipal and buses. After that, cars can live in a garage somewhere on the mainland.

  • I don’t see how you can be Free Market supporters and yet want to “banish” or regulate anything.

    Every metropolis, after hundreds of years of liberal planners, is still radically dependent on personal transit systems like the car (PTS).

    Every modality of public transport has been tried and retried and cannot serve the public the way a PTS does.

  • I don’t see how you can be Free Market supporters and yet want to “banish” or regulate anything.

    Every metropolis, after hundreds of years of liberal planners, is still radically dependent on personal transit systems like the car (PTS).

    Every modality of public transport has been tried and retried and cannot serve the public the way a PTS does.

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