Here We Go Again
Density is good. That’s the message from Ryan Avent, a writer for The Economist, whose new ebook, The Gated City, received a boost from a promotional op ed in the New York Times. Density, according to Avent, makes people wealthier, happier, and more productive. The data he uses to support these ideas, however, are suspect. […]
Omaha’s Unlivable Plan
Three years ago, the Antiplanner reviewed the regional transportation plans for the nation’s 70 largest metropolitan areas and found that 40 of them had some form of “smart-growth,” anti-auto policies built in. One that did not was for Omaha. Omaha planners are eager to rectify that situation. Perhaps in response to Ray LaHood’s direction that […]
Suburbs Are Still Growing
Next time someone tells you about how everyone is returning to the cities, point them to these maps based on the 2010 census. Available for the forty largest urban areas in the United States, they show, almost without exception, the central cities losing population and the suburbs gaining. According to the mapmakers, “deep blue indicates […]
Mixed Messages from Fortune Magazine
On March 29, Colin Barr, a Fortune magazine financial writer, argues in a blog post that “housing prices will keep falling.” Just two weeks later, the cover story of the April 11 Fortune proclaims the “return of real estate” and says “it’s time to buy again.” They can’t both be right: either Fortune magazine is […]
Mesa Del Dolares
Saturday, the Antiplanner spoke in Damascus, Oregon, a rural community on the fringe of the Portland area that Metro planners have targeted to become a dense, New Urban city of 100,000. The residents of the area are none too happy about that and have been fighting it by passing initiatives preventing the city from cooperating […]
Aid and Comfort to the Enemy
Later this week, the Antiplanner will review The Triumph of the City, a new book by Harvard economist Edward Glaeser. But because a crucial part of that book is based on a working paper written by Glaeser and UCLA economist Matthew Kahn, I first want to review that paper. Titled “The Greenness of Cities: Carbon […]
Housing and Economic Growth
Nations with well-functioning housing markets that are responsive to changes in demand will be more likely to grow faster than nations with strict land-use regulation, says a new report from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The report is a part of a series of studies known as Going for Growth that are […]
Small May Be Beautiful, but Coercion Is Not
A new report from Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality urges the state to give people incentives to live in smaller homes or disincentives to live in larger ones. A Life Cycle Approach to Prioritizing Methods of Preventing Waste from the Residential Construction Sector reviews the energy costs of various styles of homes and comes to […]
Interpreting the Election Results
Tea party supporters do not agree on a lot of issues, but are firm on two things: cutting government spending and protecting property rights. What do the election results mean for the future of land-use and transportation planning? On one hand, many of the results look promising for supporters of property rights and efficient (user-fee-driven) […]
How Many Subsidies Can Dance on the Head of a TOD?
Rail transit advocates often claim that new rail lines increase the value of properties near rail stations. While the Antiplanner is skeptical of many of these claims, a new report casts a dark light on such increased property values. According to this report from the Dukakis Center for Urban Policy (yes, that Dukakis), increased property […]
Protests in Stuttgart
From 5,000 miles away, it is difficult to tell what is going on in Stuttgart, Germany, where tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets in protest against a $6 billion plan to replace the city’s World War I-vintage train station. Is the main concern the cost? The loss of a historic structure? […]
Urban Planning Dream or Nightmare?
In Best-Laid Plans, the Antiplanner argues that cities are too complicated to plan, so anyone who tries to plan them ends up following fads and focusing on one or two goals to the near-exclusion of all else. The current fad is to reduce per capita driving by increasing density and spending money on rail transit. […]
