In my previous post, I reviewed an old book on Japan while teasing a new one:If you read one book about Japan this year, it should be the beautiful, new Emergent Tokyo: Designing the Spontaneous City by Jorge Almazan and his Studiolab colleagues, including Joe McReynolds. But if you read … [Read more...]
Book Review: The Making of Urban Japan
If you read one book about Japan this year, it should be the beautiful, new Emergent Tokyo: Designing the Spontaneous City by Jorge Almazan and his Studiolab colleagues, including Joe McReynolds. But if you read two books about Japan, as you should, the second one should be André Sorensen's … [Read more...]
Reading Hayek in Holland
Reading Hayek in HollandPhoto by Peter FurthDuring a working vacation in the Netherlands, I had the dissonant experience of reading Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom in one of the most comprehensively planned environments on earth. Hayek’s thesis is that central economic planning displaces … [Read more...]
How YIMBYs used Ostrom to recruit conservatives
A major barrier to the market urbanist’s ability to make the case for building more housing is the question of aesthetics. When you refer to density in cities, it’s easy to picture large brutalist towers and the slum-like conditions that can be seen in much of the developing world. Of course, this … [Read more...]
What’s Wrong With Hong Kong?
One common argument against new housing is that the laws of supply and demand simply don’t apply to dense cities like New York, San Francisco ands Hong Kong, because new housing or upzoning might raise land prices.* After all (some people argue) Hong Kong is really dense and really … [Read more...]
The Limits of the Singapore Housing Model
In 2015, urban studies professor Anne Haila published a book on Singapore’s land ownership and housing system called Urban Land Rent: Singapore as a Property State. The Singapore housing model has recently been getting some attention for its widespread homeownership and affordability relative to … [Read more...]
For once I agree with the NIMBYs: please don’t turn my neighborhood into Dubai- because Dubai isn’t dense enough!
One common argument against new housing is that it will turn "[neighborhood at issue] into Dubai." Evidently, some people think Dubai is a hellscape of super-dense skyscapers.In fact, Many Dubai neighborhoods aren't very dense at all.There is one Dubai neighborhood that is more dense than … [Read more...]
The Human Cost of Zoning in Indian Cities
by Shanu AthiparambathYears ago, I worked for a magazine in Delhi. I wanted to live near the magazine office, but the rent was too damn high. In a low-rent area nearby, I rented a dingy room my girlfriend named “The Black Hole.” In buildings sitting across the street from mine, rents were many … [Read more...]