1. The WSJ claims that delinquent homeowners can expect to stay in their homes after making their last mortgage payment – that is, they can live rent-free – for at least 16 months. The longer it takes for foreclosures to happen, the longer it will take for real estate markets to adjust to the new paradigm.

2. Fascinating article about food trucks in Houston. In it I found a second example of bad anti-terrorism policy trumping good urbanism:

Chimed in Joyce: “We all know that Houston is not a walking city, as much as we wish it was. But there are two areas that are walkable – downtown and the Medical Center. The use of propane trucks is prohibited downtown, however. The regulation was originally put in place as a part of Homeland Security after 9/11, but the Houston Fire Department continues to enforce it. That’s an example of something we’re looking to work with, to allow food trucks to operate in these higher foot traffic areas.”

The article also confirms my suspicion that food trucks may actually be safer than restaurants: “These are essentially open kitchens…you can look in there and see exactly what these guys are doing, where they’re grabbing the food from, how they’re cooking it.”

3. Hong Kong and Singapore are both instituting controls on their residential property markets to avoid bubbles, but they are also freeing government land for developers (in spite of Singapore’s free market reputation, most residents apparently live in public housing). Some speculate that Hong Kong’s controls might be a sign of increasing control from Beijing. Reuters says that “China, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Malaysia have also unveiled more stringent regulations in recent months” – the bubble that led to the 1997 financial crisis had a large property component. The Beijing Communist Party mouthpiece, apparently fearing that investors have too much faith in the local government, blames the city’s high rents on prostitutes.

4. Cap’n Transit on road subsidies. These sorts of debates often frustrate me because I feel like people are not clear as to which roads they’re talking about (federal, state, local?).

5. Al Gore admits that first-generation ethanol was a mistake and he only supported it because of “a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa” (yes, he really said that). But talk is cheap – he’s still sticking by non-food biofuels, though I think those’re just as bad. On the bright side, though, DeMint and Tom Coburn are apparently ready to let some key ethanol subsidies lapse this year.

6. DC developer forced to offer below-market rents to an IHOP. You know what would really help “small, local, minority-owned businesses”? Eliminating mandates like this that lead to constrained property markets and sky-high rents.

7. Remember that god-awful North Jersey mall project Xanadu, whose demise prompted an item in the last link list?  Well apparently Chris Christie wants to throw more money down that hole. Speaking of which: Did they really not realize the negative associations people have with the name “Xanadu”? Or is that just evidence that not even the person who named it had any faith in it?

8. Real estate investors are bidding up prices for apartment buildings, says the NYT. Hopefully the increase in prices will convince local officials to zone for more multifamily development.

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1. Vancouver’s laneway housing program (which we discussed earlier) has been off to a brisk start, and though planners are looking to liberalize sewer rules, they’re also considering only allowing one-story houses as-of-right, and limiting the amount of new laneway houses per block.

2. Former Market Urbanism contributer Sandy Ikeda writes about the urban origins of liberty at the Freeman.

3. The Dukakis Center has released a report suggesting that the gentrification caused by new light rail lines might cause driving to increase, defeating the purpose of TOD. Megan McArdle has also been discussing gentrification. Hopefully I’ll write something about this and gentrification more generally soon, but I wanted to post this in case I don’t get around to it. Any thoughts from the commenters on why this is and how it can be avoided?

4. North Korea “declare[s] war” on its version of the jitney, the “servi-cha.”

5. LA is the only big city in America whose fire department mandates that all skyscrapers have flat roofs so as to allow helicopters to land, but this may be changing (Curbed, parts 1 and 2).

6. Disabled riders file a class-action lawsuit against NYC’s MTA “for not spending a federally mandated 20% of [subway] station rehabilitation budgets on improvements like elevators and ramps.” The ADA’s impact on mass transit and urbanism is something that I’d eventually like to discuss more in depth, but I haven’t seen much research or even many anecdotes about it – perhaps our commenters have some insight?

7. Delhi is getting 345 km of new BRT lanes, although they seem to be coming at the expense of private buses, which were taken out of service as a test during the Commonwealth Games in a move that will now become permanent. The most common complaint appears to be safety, and though the private Blueline buses are going to be replaced in the short-run by private contracted service, it looks like the city is seeking to socialize mass transit in the long-run. This seems to echo the pattern seen in many developing countries of municipalizing transit service, with examples both recent (Santiago, Chile, now and then) and from America’s own past. Some dense Asian cities bucked the trend, but they seem to be the exception rather than the rule.  Mass transit, perhaps more than any other industry, has escaped the recent global trend towards privatization.

8. Developers working on a large new affordable housing development in Brooklyn claim that it wouldn’t have been possible if it weren’t for a “mayoral override of the parking requirement,” which allowed them to not build a single parking space. I’m happy that they were granted the exemption, but I wonder how many smaller or less politically-connected developers are oversupplying parking or deciding to not build at all because of the requirements.

Might a "Don't steal from highways to fund mass transit" sign be in our future?

9. Sam Staley suggests that the Tea Party movement might get involved in local land use decisions. But given their wishy-washy libertarianism and overwhelming suburban/rural orientation, I doubt they’d break out of the standard pro-car NIMBY mold and advocate for a true market in land use and transportation.

10. “Development specialists” have convinced Cambodia to privatize its interurban passenger and freight rail service, though land title issues for settlements that have sprung near tracks may pose difficulties.

11. New York City passes a pedicab regulation bill, which Meredith Sladek criticizes for giving local community boards the power to restrict pedicabs from operating in their neighborhoods, as well as for its outright ban on motors (which have at most half the power of a lawnmower) to assist the cyclist.

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I wrote last week about a tendency in developing Asian countries to emulate the most anti-market Western planning policies, but I didn’t realize it was this bad. Paul Barter writes:

Would it surprise you to know that some cities control the price of parking even for private-sector off-street parking operations?

Beijing, Guangzhou, Hanoi and Jakarta do control parking prices, so I assume the practice is common throughout China, Indonesia and Vietnam.

Obviously, the “controlling” is a price cap, not a price minimum, and Barter makes a convincing case that the rates are indeed below the market price. I don’t recall ever hearing about price controls on private parking in the West, but it looks like the urge to come up with new ways to cater to car owners is universal.

I should add that Paul Barter’s new blog Reinventing Parking is a must-read for anyone interested in parking policy. He’s based in Singapore and writes a lot about Southeast Asia and China, and has another more general blog called Reinventing Urban Transport.

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