One argument against bus lanes, bicycle lanes, congestion pricing, elimination of minimum parking requirements, or indeed almost any transportation improvement that gets in the way of high-speed automobile traffic is that such changes to the status quo might make sense in the Upper West Side, but … [Read more...]
Getting Hasidim and cars wrong- and what we can learn from this
I am currently reading A Fortress in Brooklyn, a (mostly) fine book about the relationship between Williamsburg's Satmar Hasidim and real estate policy.One chapter discusses Satmar opposition to bike lanes in their neighborhood, and suggests that one cause of this opposition might be that … [Read more...]
Confounding Diversity with Segregation Again
In July, I showed that an otherwise careful group of researchers at the Othering and Belonging Institute were using a measure of statistical racial segregation that confounds diversity with segregation. Briefly, regions with more variety in the racial makeup of their neighborhoods will show up as … [Read more...]
Book review: Last Harvest
In the standard urban growth model, a circular city lies in a featureless agricultural plain. When the price of land at the edge of the city rises above the value of agricultural land, “land conversion” occurs. In the real world, we’re more likely to call it “development” and it is, of course, a lot … [Read more...]
Is Diversity “Segregation”?
Headlines last month proclaimed that “Cities Have Grown More Diverse, And More Segregated, Since the 90s.” The headlines originate in the key findings of a new, detailed study from the Othering and Belonging Institute (OBI) at UC Berkeley. The study leans heavily on a relatively new metric – the … [Read more...]
Why rents aren’t keeping up with house prices
Global house prices have been out of control for quite some time. This has helped to reduce economic growth, increase unemployment and was even diagnosed as the greatest cause of inequality in the developed world in a 2016 paper by Matthew Rognlie. However, rents have failed to show the same … [Read more...]
The Duplex: Gateway Drug to Urban Density
After over a century, Berkeley, California may be about to legalize missing middle housing - and it’s not alone. Bids to re-legalize gradual densification in the form of duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and the like have begun to pick up steam over the last several years. In 2019, Oregon legalized … [Read more...]
Latest rent research
A recent paper by UCLA researchers discusses 2019-20 literature on the relationship between new construction and rents. The article discusses five papers; four of them found that new housing consistently lowers rents in nearby buildings.For example, Kate Pennington wrote a paper on the … [Read more...]