Ayn Rand's recent appearances in the news made me think about her position on urban issues. Some of her novels suggest that she is anti-city, believing that individualism can only be achieved by living in remote areas. In Anthem, for example, her protagonist lives in a type of dorm where people are … [Read more...]
Selling the Rights to Greater Density
At Next American City, Mark Bergen has an interesting long-form piece on municipal infrastructure financing. He argues that the property owners who benefit from public policies, such as infrastructure investment, should be required to fund these policies. He suggests infrastructure improvements … [Read more...]
The High Cost of Free Parking Preface and Afterword
This is the last post in the series on Donald Shoup's The High Cost of Free Parking. Previous can be found here:Chapters 1 - 4Chapters 5 - 9Chapters 10 - 14Chapters 16 - 18Chapters 19 - 22PrefaceIn these two chapters, which Donald Shoup added for the paperback edition of … [Read more...]
The High Cost of Free Parking Chapters 19-22
This post from the series on The High Cost of Free Parking is reposted from last week because the site's database caused recent posts to be deleted.Chapter 19: The Ideal Source of Local Public RevenueIn this chapter, Donald Shoup makes the case that passing up the potential revenue source of … [Read more...]
The High Cost of Free Parking Chapters 16 – 18
This post follows on the earlier discussion of the The High Cost of Free Parking.Chapter 16 -- Turning Small Change in Big ChangesHere Donald Shoup gets to the idea of using Business Improvement Districts to manage street parking as Brandon Smith mentioned in the last post's comments. When … [Read more...]
The High Cost of Free Parking Chapters 10-14
This post follows on the earlier discussion of the The High Cost of Free Parking.I realized that I left a couple of important points out of the last post. First, Shoup applies the Hippocratic Oath of "first, do no harm," to parking requirements. What a great way to think about city planning. If … [Read more...]
The High Cost of Free Parking Chapters 5-9
This post follows on the earlier discussion of the first four chapters of The High Cost of Free Parking.Chapter 5- A Great Planning DisasterShoup sets up parking requirements as a great planning disaster. If an individual developer chose to dedicate more of his land to parking than his … [Read more...]
Book Club Update
The next post on The High Cost of Free Parking will be on Monday, covering chapters 5-9, for anyone who is reading along. … [Read more...]