In the comments of my most recent post, insightful commenter, OldUrbanism pointed out some items that need attention: The last two factors, legal costs associated with eminent domain and opportunity costs of land, are in fact often included in typical project cost estimates for both public and … [Read more...]
Rothbard the Urbanist Part 5: Diversity and Discrimination
This 5th installment of the Rothbard Series dovetails well with the most recent post on segregation by guest blogger, Stephen Smith, as well as a post back in July over at Austin Contrarian. If you haven’t kept up with our discussion, Murray Rothbard’s classic For A New Liberty can be … [Read more...]
Rothbard the Urbanist Part 2: Safe Streets
The recent post, Public Education’s Role in Sprawl and Exclusion generated some interest and fantastic comments. I recommend reading Murray Rothbard's For a New Liberty in its entirety. It is elegant in its consistently radical application of principles. It is available for free from the Mises … [Read more...]
The Nature of the Living City
Sandy Ikeda posted an abstract for a short essay he is contributing to a Festschrift honoring Jane Jacobs. He quite eloquently describes the nature of the living city: A city is not a man-made thing. Rather, it emerges from the actions of its inhabitants, who interact in … [Read more...]
Intro to Emergent Urbanism
Mathieu Helie has been writing at a blog he calls Emergent Urbanism. His most recent post is the first part of a series that will be published as an entire article entitled “The Principles of Emergent Urbanism” at International Journal of Architectural Research. This first part of the … [Read more...]
Stadtluft Macht Frei (city air makes one free)
Thomas Schmidt wrote a great article for LewRockwell.com that covers a lot of urbanist ground, with some help from a broad selection of Jane Jacobs’ work. Here’s a snippet: Though you might blame any number of obvious villains and historical processes for this, the name Ebenezer Howard would … [Read more...]
Books for Beginner Urbanists
Over at Where, Dan Lorentz identified the top 5 books that he considers “the basics of urbanism”, as well as a “Tall Stack of Other Suggestions”: Based on that library visit, on posted comments from readers, on behind-the-scenes advice from Where contributors and my interpretation—from my own … [Read more...]
Taxing Land Speculation
Bill Hudnut at the Urban Land Institute wrote a post that attracted some attention at Austin Contrarian and Overhead Wire. Hudnut discusses a different approach to taxing land: How about restructuring the property tax across America to install a two-tiered system? More tax on those horizontal … [Read more...]