Earlier this week Cap'n Transit wrote about Tysons Corner in the context of the Silver Line TIFIA loan application and Tysons' Smart Growth redevelopment. This development plan is something I am quite familiar with as it was the subject of my MA thesis, and his post brought to mind some of the weird … [Read more...]
From the experts on charter cities
After my post on charter cities, I received some interesting feedback from Michael Strong, CEO of MGK Group, the company investing in Honduras' charter cities and Brandon Fuller, a Research Scholar at NYU's Urbanization Project. The Urbanization Project is headed by Paul Romer who is no longer … [Read more...]
Opportunity for States to Protect Land Use
If this season's political campaign rhetoric has demonstrated anything, it's that governors love to take credit for job creation. What I haven't seen any governor mention, though, is that there is huge opportunity for economic growth in relaxing zoning codes. Most obviously, allowing new … [Read more...]
Tokyo’s surprising lack of density
Wendell Cox has received his fair share of criticism from this blog, but his post last week about Tokyo's surprising lack of density is very interesting. Sure, Tokyo's suburbs are dense enough to be connected by job centers by rail, but the core is almost completely low- and lower-mid-rise, and thus … [Read more...]
Randal O’Toole: “If you didn’t have those suburban restrictions, you wouldn’t have that pressure for density in DC”
Earlier today I posted the video of the Cato discussion on housing with Randal O'Toole, Ryan Avent, Adam Gordon, and Matt Yglesias, but I wanted to transcribe one segment towards the end. (Like I said, it's hard to skip to the end of the streaming video because you can't scroll beyond what's already … [Read more...]
Market urbanism vs. market suburbanism smackdown at Cato: “The Death and Life of Affordable Housing”
The debate you've been waiting for! Randal O'Toole, Matt Yglesias, Ryan Avent, and Adam Gordon participated yesterday in a discussion at the Cato Institute moderated by Diana Lind from Next American City/Forefront. (How had this never happened before??)Randal O'Toole did not disappoint, arriving … [Read more...]
Some Empirical Evidence on Preference for Cities
This semester I took an econometrics class because I got an MA with the bare minimum of quantitative classes. For the class, I wrote a paper asking the question, "Are consumers willing to pay a premium to live in dense urban areas?" It's easy to see that urban density is correlated with higher … [Read more...]
Mandating attractive urban design
The most recent installment of the American Enterprise Institute's series Society and Culture Outlook features a piece about the role of urban design in how people use cities. The article "A plea for beauty: a manifesto for a new urbanism" by Roger Scruton is a deviation from AEI's typically … [Read more...]