An article in Curbed by Lane Brown has gotten much publicity in Twitter. The article makes two factual claims: 1) New York City is still losing households, and thus there was no reason for rents to go back up in 2021-22; and 2) landlords are conspiring to keep supply down because some apartments are still […]
Introducing Szymon Pifczyk
New year, new ideas. Market Urbanism is proud to welcome Szymon Pifczyk as a new writer who will bring new perspectives to this ever-evolving blog. Szymon's Polish-language Twitter handle is @sheemawn, which is a pronunciation clue. His English-language … [Read More...]
Are the new carbon footprint maps accurate?
It's pretty obvious that people use less energy when they live in urban areas versus suburbs: they take fewer and shorter drives and they heat and cool less square footage per person. But can that be quantified accurately at a local level and compared across … [Read More...]
Wanted: Market urbanist research assistant
Ever wondered how you could make your urbanism hobby a full-time job? Come work with me & Emily Hamilton at the Mercatus Center's Urbanity project:Are you a gritty, liberty-minded researcher who is passionate about cities? This is a unique opportunity … [Read More...]
An Anti-Anti-NIMBY article
During the Trump Administration, liberals sometimes criticized conservatives for being anti-anti-Trump: that is, not directly championing Trump's more obnoxious behaviour, but devoting their energies to criticizing people who criticized him.Similarly, I've … [Read More...]
Would the Vienna strategy work here?
Progressives often argue that American cities should imitate Vienna's 1920s strategy of building enormous amounts of public housing while controlling rents paid to private landlords. But a look at the birth of Vienna's public housing system shows why that … [Read More...]
Louisville and density regulation
Lydia Lo and Yonah Freemark have an interesting new paper ? EditSignon zoning in Louisville on the Urban Institute website. They point out that of the land zoned for single-family housing, 59 percent is zoned R4, requiring 9000-square-foot lots, which means … [Read More...]
Urban Paths “World” Cup
Final update: the Milwaukee River Greenway is hereby declared the Best Urban Path in the United States! Sadly, it's among those that I haven't yet visited, a situation I'll need to rectify. I've invited a few Greenway partisans to write a guest post about what … [Read More...]
Is affordability just, “You get what you pay for”?
In a tweet this week, the Welcoming Neighbors Network recommended that pro-housing advocates keep supply-and-demand arguments in their back pockets and emphasize simpler housing composition … [Read More...]