Jane Jacobs
1. This week at Market Urbanism:
Nolan Gray contributed a post Who Plans?: Jane Jacobs’ Hayekian critique of urban planning discussing Jacobs’ three arguments against central planning:
Hayek and Jacobs defended the importance of local knowledge, illustrated the power of decentralized planning, and celebrated the sublime spontaneous orders that organize our lives. Yet their theoretical innovations went largely unnoticed long after their respective publications. Here, the two thinkers diverge: while Hayekian ideas have largely driven centralized economic planning into the dustbin of history, I suspect the Jacobsian urban revolution has only just begun.
The post was also discussed at Reason and Urban Liberty
2. Where’s Scott?:
Scott Beyer is now in Oklahoma City, with plans to spend this weekend in Stillwater, OK. This week at Forbes, he described urban liberals’ inability to understand housing “filtering”:
Officials believe that if new projects can’t be forced to charge lower prices, they shouldn’t be allowed at all. A smarter approach would be to view such projects the way one would view a gated community of mansions. Sure, such housing isn’t affordable, but it still serves a purpose: to provide rich people a place to live, thereby opening up older, smaller, less luxurious units for lower-income people.
3. At the Market Urbanism Facebook Group:
Nolan Gray shared a CityLab piece quantifying the influx of young people in downtowns
Private Protection Co. Puts Govt. Police to Shame in Detroit via Mark Frazier
Bad news from John Morris: L.A. is seizing tiny homes from the homeless
What Computer Games Taught Daniel Hertz About Urban Planning via Erik Genc
4. Elsewhere:
Strong Towns spent the week discussing the numerous ways federal housing policies distort the marketplace against walkable urban environments. Lots of good reads and podcasts…
Chicago plans to use Eminent Domain to seize the old Post Office and sell it. (when Chicago issues an RFP, that means politicians already have a developer in mind)
Sandy Ikeda‘s latest at at FEE: The Answer to Expensive Housing: Build More
City Journal on the reactionary culture of San Francisco.
The NY Post pans Santiago Calatrava’s newly-built World Trade Center transit center.
A roundtable discussion of filtering at the Washington Post.
5. Stephen Smith‘s Tweet of the Week:
Market saturation? Hahahahhaha just kidding. It was NIMBYs. They also caused a 5-story parking garage to be built! https://t.co/HSgvrCnqvc
— Market Urbanism (@MarketUrbanism) February 25, 2016
