August 01, 2008
Why Everyone is Wrong About the New LA Fast-Food Ordinance
Lots of chatter over the last few days in the blogosphere about Los Angeles' new ordinance banning new fast-food restaurants in south LA. (Not "South Central": we don't call it that anymore). And everyone is wrong. My friend and colleague Steve Bainbridge, whose picture is in many dictionaries next to the word "curmudgeon", sees it as not-so-creeping nanny state-ism. So...
July 28, 2008
Environmental Review and the New Urbanism
Lots of folks, including myself, are interested in making US cities more walkable, transit-oriented places to live, and observe that the current spate of land use regulations often makes this impossible. (Note to critics: if you argue against New Urbanism by saying that people don't want to live in New Urbanist communities, then that means you are in favor of...
July 24, 2008
The Backyardigans Save America's Suburbs
My four-year-old loves the Backyardigans, the wonderful children's series in which the characters (anthropomorphic animals, of course), develop adventures that they then act out--and maybe more so--in their backyard (thus the name). But little does she realize that the show might have a partial solution for American suburbs. Key to the whole concept is that the characters' families share a...
April 25, 2008
Aquabiking in The Netherlands
One final note on bicycling in the Netherlands. In their search for the stupidest bike lane in America, Slate gives props to a (quite-possibly apocryphal) Dutch bike lane that beats them all. The Dutch are known for innovative traffic-management schemes, with pedestrians, bikes, and cars sharing the road. But I believe in separating bikes from swimmers and boats. Update: A...
March 07, 2008
It's not just fossil fuels
Let's play a kids' riddle game. My short-term benefits on first use are positive, and can be obtained at very low up-front cost. In your social circle, I indicate coolness and status. Once you use me, you find that the (again, short-term) benefits of using are increasingly greater than not using, even if you start to wish you had never...
February 17, 2008
Transition
This morning the NYT woke me up with a story about a building a block from where I grew up, that I passed every day of high school on my way to the subway. I had always found the building itself striking and a little scary, and too small for the claims of its design. It's nice to see at...
December 08, 2007
Price controls in the fun-house mirror
Tyler Cowen, a smart and creative economist especially dear to me because of his interest in the economics of the arts, occasionally falls into a state of self-hypnosis with his own chops, to the point that he’s invented a persona (Tyrone) to show off how deftly he can manipulate the left-wing arguments he usually knocks. Today the subject is rent...
