The Ling Library of Urbanism
1. This week at Market Urbanism
Episode 1 of the Market Urbanism podcast came out this week. Nolan Gray plans to release new episodes bi-weekly. The RSS feed is http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:236686274/sounds.rss
You can currently find the podcast on Soundcloud and PlayerFM. It will be available within the next few days on iTunes, Stitcher, and TuneIn. If there are other podcasting services you would like me to plug the RSS feed into, please let me know in the comment section below.
Cities And The Growth Of Our Collective Brain by Emily Hamilton
Sandy Ikeda describes the entrepreneur’s environment as the “action space.” Today, an action space could be in a suburban home for an entrepreneur who creates a digital product that’s sold online. While action space doesn’t necessarily need to be a place of high density, this face-to-face element remains a key part of the world’s most productive action spaces.
Economist Sandy Ikeda, a previous MU contributor, is back. Here’s the first of what will be weekly content, published every Tuesday at 10am eastern standard time–How The Housing Market Works
In other words, it’s not the entrepreneurs, developers, architects, and construction companies that build very expensive housing in cities like New York that drives up housing prices! Indeed, those people are responding to what they believe buyers are willing to pay, and if they are prevented from building those units the result will be higher prices for everybody. And if you observe housing prices rise despite increasing supply, that probably indicates demand is currently increasing faster than supply. Prices, however, would have been even higher were the government to undertake policies that restricted supply.
2. Where’s Scott?
Scott Beyer is spending his last night tomorrow in Austin. Then he’ll spend a couple days in San Antonio, before leaving Texas. His Forbes article this week was America’s Ugly Strip Malls Were Caused By Government Regulation
Most cities’ comprehensive zoning maps separate residential, commercial and industrial uses. They usually allow commercial retail on just a handful of key roads that run from downtown to the suburbs. So that’s where most of the retail ends up. It’s as if the government has taken uses that are fundamentally ugly, and crammed them together, causing the ugliness to spread.
3. At the Market Urbanism Facebook Group:
Anthony Ling posted a photo of his urbanism library (see photo above)
Tom W. Bell asks a question on “differential impacts on local economies of improvements in long-distance transport system”
Jim Pagels wrote an article, “why asking if Airbnb takes rooms from the permanent housing stock is a somewhat fair, but wrong question to ask.”
Graham Peterson asks about what incentives municipalities use to keep codes restrictive
Bob McGrew wants to discuss Tyler Cowen‘s, Should everyone crowd into New York and San Francisco?
Matt Robare wrote, “Can Cooperative Businesses Save Communities?
David Welton has some excellent suggestions for the reading list on the MU website, which is quite stale
via John Morris: Carless Renters Forced to Pay $440 Million a Year for Parking They Don’t Use
via John Morris: The Aqua Dam Sounded Nuts, Until…
via Brad DeVos: India plans to use 3D paintings as virtual speed-breakers to make its roads safer
via John Morris: The Forgotten Tale of How America Converted Its 1980 Olympic Village Into a Prison
via Todd Litman: The True Cost of Commuting: You Could Buy a House Priced $15,900 More for Each Mile You Move Closer to Work
via Scott Beyer: lack of zoning and bureaucracy has helped Rio’s favelas
via Todd Litman, “Here is another study which examines the inefficiency and inequity of minimum parking requirements which force households to pay for parking spaces regardless of whether or not they need them.” [pdf]
via John Morris: As Homeless Find Refuge in Forests, ‘Anger Is Palpable’ in Nearby Towns
via John Morris, “Growing evidence the Vancouver property market has cracked“
via Matt Robare: How do we know zoning really constrains development?
via John Morris: Smugglers Secretly Repairing Russian Roads to Boost Business
via Rob Michael: Nolan Gray‘s original MU post on trailer parks republished at Strong Towns
via Michael Hendrix: Why the High Cost of Big-City Living is Bad for Everyone
via Bjorn Swenson, ‘The narrative in my home state of Colorado is that the state is “full.”
4. Elsewhere
WSJ: regulators could push driver-less car innovation out of the U.S.
Bill Fulton: An Old Slow-Growther Reshapes Himself As Trumpian
Forbes: Uber Debuts Amazon Prime-Style Ride Service To Lock In Users
5. Stephen Smith‘s tweet of the week:
If you want buildings to look very different from each other, you need to build them at different times.
— Market Urbanism (@MarketUrbanism) August 24, 2016
