With the District of Columbia's height restriction entering its 100th year, Lydia DePillis from the Washington City Paper explains why downtown DC is all superblocks with so little natural light:While reading about the new Safeway-anchored residential development just approved in Wheaton, … [Read more...]
The economics of redevelopment and the shape of socialist cities
Earlier today I read an article by Daniel Garst about Bejing's awkward population distribution that reminded me of a journal article about the general shape of socialist cities that I read a while back. Garst talks about Beijing being a "circus tent" when it comes to density, with population … [Read more...]
When will New Jersey reverse its sprawling ways?
by Stephen SmithNew Jersey has always been an odd state – it's the most densely populated of the fifty, and yet it lies just outside of the core of both of its metro areas (Philadelphia and New York). North Jersey does have a formidable number of mid-sized cities, but the biggest – Newark - is … [Read more...]
A comment on NYU’s proposed superblocks
Benjamin Hemric left an interesting comment about my remark about NYU's expansion plans in Greenwich Village. First of all, I should admit that I was lazy and got NYU's plans totally wrong – they are going to add towers to the three that I. M. Pei already built, not tear them down, and they're … [Read more...]
More links!
Why didn't I catch onto this whole linking thing earlier? Are these link lists boring for you guys?1. Human Transit has a great post on "density" and all the different ways to measure it, with a cool picture of sprawling apartment buildings that illustrates why transit use in the Las Vegas … [Read more...]
The Nation’s mass transit hypocrisy
by Stephen SmithI was heartened to see an article about the need for mass transit in the pages of The Nation, though I was severely disappointed by the magazine's own hypocrisy and historical blindness. The article is in all ways a standard left-liberal screed against the car and for mass … [Read more...]
Redistribution
Discussing Ithaca, New York's plan to increase permitted density and reduce parking minimums, I can dig what Matthew Yglesias says : The distributive impact of parking minimums is to redistribute income from people who don’t own cars to people who do own cars—not to shift income from poor to rich. … [Read more...]
Taxing Land Speculation
Bill Hudnut at the Urban Land Institute wrote a post that attracted some attention at Austin Contrarian and Overhead Wire. Hudnut discusses a different approach to taxing land: How about restructuring the property tax across America to install a two-tiered system? More tax on those horizontal … [Read more...]