Here's a link to an interesting article by Scott Page at Planetizen called A Journalistic View of Cities Scott discusses how mainstream journalists are poorly equipped to write appropriately on urban issues aside from than architecture.I was reading the New York Times Magazine special … [Read more...]
Social Networking With Market Urbanism
Last week, a reader submitted a Market Urbanism post to Reddit, a social networking site. The submission generated quite a bit of traffic from the economics category on Reddit. It was #3 on the hot list for economics for a while that day.Seeing what kind of traffic that can be generated from … [Read more...]
Urban[ism] Legend: Zoning Creates Density
![Urban[ism] Legend: Zoning Creates Density](https://i1.wp.com/ec2-34-201-95-206.compute-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/zoningdiagram.jpg?fit=454%2C441)
This post will be the first of many of an ongoing feature at Market Urbanism entitled Urbanism Legends. (a play on the term: "Urban Legends" in case you didn't catch that) In many public forums and in the blogosphere, I consistently encounter myths about land development and Urban Economics. These … [Read more...]
NYC 20-Somethings’ Stagnant Wages and Higher Cost of Living
I need help with this one. Is this a phenomenon of statistical cherry-picking or a true trend that should worry us?New York Observer - A Yoke for the White Collar New York’s college grads now hustle for jobs paying 1970s wages. Meet their coping mechanism—massive debt!A younger New Yorker … [Read more...]
Subsidies and Taxes Favor Owning Over Renting
Paul Krugman asks a question that has been addressed at Market Urbansim:But here’s a question rarely asked, at least in Washington: Why should ever-increasing homeownership be a policy goal? How many people should own homes, anyway?Listening to politicians, you’d think that every family … [Read more...]
Should Government Own Wilderness?
I found a link to a great article at FreeColorado.com. It doesn't apply to urbanism specifically, but conceptually deals with privatization of publicly owned land.Free Colorado - Should Government Own Wilderness? The original article was from Grand Junction Free Press - Armstrong Column: … [Read more...]
Could a Private Street Look Like This?
photo at Brooklyn Paper was attributed to Montague Street Business Improvement DistrictStephen at rationalitate occasionally brings up that truly privatized streets could be converted to other uses. I think it would be inevitable that on streets with many shops and cafes, such as Montague … [Read more...]
Gramercy Park: Private Open Space
photo by flickr user wallygBack in the days in the Wild Wild East of private land ownership and limited land-use restrictions, parks were actually created by market forces. The same forces that created and preserved Gramercy Park could easily be used to preserve Historic Landmarks and low … [Read more...]