I recently finished The Power Broker by Robert Caro after many months of Metro reading. I loved the book, and can't recommend it enough. Caro provides an overview of Robert Moses' policies here. If you don't want to invest in reading the full 1162 pages, I would particularly recommend the chapters … [Read more...]
A Conversation about the Commonwealth of Belle Isle
Yesterday I learned about a proposed free city in the United States through Arnold Kling. The project, called the Commonwealth of Belle Isle would be located on an island on the Detroit River that is currently a city park. The proposal comes from Detroit real estate developer Rod Lockwood who … [Read more...]
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Centrally Planned City
On my last post about Ayn Rand's views on cities, I received feedback in the comments that obviously she loved cities and on Twitter that obviously she did not. I think I come down on the side that she likely saw cities, and particularly skyscrapers, as embodiment of human achievement. However Frank … [Read more...]
Ayn Rand on Urbanism
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...]
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...]