Five years ago everything in California felt like a giant (land use policy) dumpster fire. Fast forward to today we live in a completely different world. Yimby activists have pushed policy, swayed elections, and dramatically shifted the overton window on California housing policy. And through this … [Read more...]
What Should YIMBYs Learn From 2018?
Believe it or not, the YIMBY movement won a lot in 2018. It kicked off with January’s high of California State Senator Scott Wiener’s introduction of SB 827, which would have permitted multifamily development near transit across the state, but fell to a low after its eventual defeat in committee, … [Read more...]
New York State’s Property Tax Cap
One reason for California’s high housing costs might be Proposition 13. This law, passed by referendum in the 1970s, may discourage housing production in two significant ways.First, under Proposition 13, all housing- even vacant land- is taxed at its original purchase price rather than its … [Read more...]
Morton’s Fork and land use issues
I recently discovered a new logical fallacy: the "Morton's Fork" fallacy. This argument is one in which contradictory observations lead to the same conclusion. For example, if I argue that new housing near public transit is bad because it (1) spurs gentrification by bringing rich people into the … [Read more...]
Book Review: The Public Wealth of Cities
The Public Wealth of Cities by Dag Detter and Stefan Fölster proposes a series of reforms to improve municipal finances. The authors lay out guidelines for creating urban wealth funds (UWFs) and argue that financial stability is key to societal success. Detter and Fölster first call for … [Read more...]
Liberty Machines™
During an urbanist twitter free-for-all last week, the thoroughly awesome term "liberty machines" was used to describe the virtues of the car. The claim was made that cars let individuals go wherever they want, whenever they want and are therefore a ‘freedom enhancing’ form of … [Read more...]
The Role for State Preemption of Local Zoning
Urbanists have increasingly turned to state-level preemption as a tool for reducing the barriers to new housing supply, recognizing the improved incentives for land-use policy relative to the local level. In a piece for the Atlantic Cities, Nolan sums up the potential for preemption to address … [Read more...]
old posts
Before there was a Market Urbanism blog, I posted short thoughts on the Congress for New Urbanism group blog. I am in the process of recovering as many of the posts as possible through the Internet Archive (archive.org). My 2015 posts are here. I hope to gradually recover the earlier posts as … [Read more...]