Market Urbanism

Liberalizing cities | From the bottom up

“Market Urbanism” refers to the synthesis of classical liberal economics and ethics (market), with an appreciation of the urban way of life and its benefits to society (urbanism). We advocate for the emergence of bottom up solutions to urban issues, as opposed to ones imposed from the top down.

Midnight links

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1. Cap’n Transit weighs in on the ARC debate, and shows that Chris Christie is more interested in shifting resources to his suburban constituents than to cutting spending. Here’s the best part:

Editorial board member: What’s the difference between a gas tax hike and a fare hike, besides who it lands on?

Christie: That’s the difference.

2. The Los Angeles Times profiles Donald Shoup. I liked this part:

Shoup depends on his bicycle for much of his mobility. He freely confesses, however, that when behind the wheel of his silver 1994 Infiniti J30, he often circles the block looking for a free parking space. “I don’t like paying for parking,” he says with a shrug.

3. Matt Yglesias notes DC’s second-only-to-NYC office rents, and blames them on the city’s absurd height restriction.  I’m happy that Yglesias is interested in urbanism, but it doesn’t really appear like he reads/interacts with the wider planning blogosphere (I stand corrected).

Comments

  1. Yglesias often has (mostly short) posts on urbanism in DC and regularly goes back and forth with the DC planning bloggers – Avent, Alpert, and Malouff, especially. In fact, Avent links to Yeglesias in his most recent post. What about his post makes you think that he’s a neophyte?

  2. Oh, and the point of the post was that office rents in DC now *surpass* NYC, due in part to the height limit.

  3. Complaints about Governnor Christie forging ahead with some highway project that ‘happens’ to be politically helpful to him smacks of Claude Rains’ “shock” at discovering gambling at the Casablanca nightclub. The governor’s critic, and not the governor, is the cynic. Whether the ARC project is sound or ill-advised is a question that stands alone.

  4. No one’s shocked about the gambling – it’s the fact that the gambler admitted that he’s gambling that’s unusual.

  5. I formerly worked in a suburban light industrial area with scads of parking and there was a long bike-pedestrian path near by … for walking!

    I always laugh at these “walkability” metrics because what they seem to focus on is how close together everything is. To me that results in less walking…if your espresso stand is only half a block away, you don’t have walk much to get to it. As opposed to living in a town style environment like here in Kent, WA where you actually can doa real walk and get some exercise to get to different places.

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