“How to Make an Attractive City”, a video by The School of Life, recently gained attention in social media. Well presented and pretty much aligned with today’s mainstream urbanism, the video earned plenty of shares and few critiques. This is probably the first critique you may read.The video is … [Read more...]
Urban[ism] Legend: The Free Market Can’t Provide Affordable Housing
Over at Greater Greater Washington, Ms. Cheryl Cort attempts to temper expectations of what she calls the “libertarian view (a more right-leaning view in our region)” on affordable housing. It is certainly reassuring to see the cosmopolitan left and the pro-market right begin to warm to the … [Read more...]
Planned Manufacturing Districts: Planning the Life Out of Districts
They are called different things in different cities, but they are similar in form and intent among the cities where they are found. For simplicity's sake, a Planned Manufacturing District (PMD), as they are called in Chicago, is an area of land, defined by zoning, that prohibits residential … [Read more...]
Bike Shares and Public Goods
Yesterday, Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley announced that seven jurisdictions in Maryland will be receiving grants to start bike share programs. The money for these grants comes from the Maryland Department of Transportation’s Federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality, so these bike shares … [Read more...]
Urban[ism] Legend: Transportation is a Public Good
In a recent post, commenter Jeremy H. helped point out that the use of the term "public good" is grossly abused in the case of transportation. Even Nobel economists refer to roads as "important examples of production of public goods," ( Samuelson and Nordhaus 1985: 48-49). I'd like to spend a … [Read more...]
Urban[ism] Legend: Traffic Planning
Mathieu Helie at Emergent Urbanism posted a link to a interesting game created at the University of Minnesota. Mathieu explains it better than I can:The game begins in the Stalinian Central Bureau of Traffic Control, where a wrinkly old man pulls you out of your job at the mail room to come … [Read more...]
Urban[ism] Legend: The Myth of Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover is not a man I consider a "Legend" - quite the contrary. I use the words "Urbanism Legend" in the context of the series of posts intended to dispel popular myths as they relate to urbanism.Myths and fallacies about Herbert Hoover are abundant these days as the media discusses the … [Read more...]
Urban[ism] Legend: Positive NPV Infrastructure
As Washington debates how many hundreds-of-billions of the nearly trillion-dollar stimulus will go towards infrastructure or to other spending/tax cut schemes, pundits claim that spending billions on "shovel ready" public works projects can effectively create jobs that will lead to recovery. As … [Read more...]