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.

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1. A shameless story of rent control in NYC. Glad to see that the city is forcing developers to subsidize wealthy Manhattanites’ Eat, Pray, Love-like dreams of moving to Paris.

2. The travails of getting a bus lane on a busy LA street where “[m]ore people already travel by bus than by car along the route during peak hours.”

3. Here is what appears to be another example of bad zoning creating blight, and the city using said blight to seize the property via eminent domain and hand it over to favored developers. NYC zoning maps are shockingly difficult to read – can anybody tell me what is allowed to be built, as of right, in the area bounded by 125th and 127th Sts. and 2nd and 3rd Ave. in Manhattan?

4. NYC’s new zoning lite handbook. No code should be so complicated that a 168-page handbook can’t even contain a zoning map.

  • It looks to me like the block between 125th and 126th is R7-2, but the block between 126th and 127th is C6-3″. It’s hard to tell exactly how high they can be because it’s expressed in terms of floor-area ratio, but it looks like R7-2 allows up to fourteen stories if you do that “tower in the park” bullshit, and C6-3 allows it without that. The parking requirements range from 40-50%, meaning that four or five spaces have to be built for every ten housing units.

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