A Crisis of Reserves
- April 18, 2011
Last week, the California legislature voted to destroy the state’s economy for another decade. The 21 senators who voted for the measure told the public they were approving a high-speed train from Los Angeles to San Francisco, but everyone knows they barely have enough money to build from Fresno to Bakersfield. In voting to borrow […]
READ MOREThe Economist reviews housing prices in London, one of the most expensive cities in the world, and what do you know, it finds that high housing prices are due to urban planning. “The biggest constraint on development in London is the Green Belt,” says the magazine that calls itself a newspaper. “Tt runs (with perforations) […]
READ MOREBack in 1995, the FTA asked transit advocates Robert Cervero (of the UC Berkeley planning school) and Samuel Seskins (of Parsons Brinckerhoff) whether transit let to changes in urban form. After reviewing the literature, they concluded that “Urban rail transit investments rarely “create” new growth, but more typically redistribute growth that would have taken place […]
READ MORECornell law professor Robert Hockett has proposed a way out of the “mortgage debt impasse” that he thinks is slowing our economy: have the federal government take all of the underwater homes by eminent domain, paying fair market value for the homes, and then sell the homes, hopefully to the previous buyers. Since the federal […]
READ MOREA return to the cities and rejection of the suburbs is an article of faith among smart-growth planners, and their wishful thinking is often supported by breathless media reports. The latest news comes from 2011 Census estimates, which the Wall Street Journal reports as revealing that the “cities outpace suburbs in growth.” MSNBC reports that […]
READ MORERepresentatives of the Association of American Planners applauded the Supreme Court’s health-care decision that a Congressional requirement to buy health insurance was a tax, not a mandate. “This provides us the tools we need to fix everything that’s wrong with America,” said association CEO Paul “Precious” Farmlands. The association’s government affairs staff immediately began crafting […]
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