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What is wrong with “How to Make an Attractive City”
“How to Make an Attractive City”, a video by The School of Life, recently gained attention in social media. Well presented and pretty much aligned with today’s mainstream urbanism, the video earned...
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Urban[ism] Legend: A Home Is A Good Investment
Despite its poor track record, homeownership is the bad investment idea that never seems to die. Even though the financial crisis revealed the risks that homeowners take on by making highly leveraged...
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The “Empty House” Theory
One common argument against new urban housing runs as follows: “If we build new housing, it will all be bought up by rich investors who will sit on it. So new supply doesn’t restrain housing costs.”...
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I recently saw a Facebook post asserting that San Francisco has 30,000 vacant units, so therefore no market-rate housing should be built. So I looked up Census data on these allegedly empty units. It...
View ArticleNIMBY Contradictions
Ever since zoning was invented in the 1920s, homeowners have argued that limits on density and on multifamily housing are necessary to protect property values. But today, urban NIMBYs seek to prevent...
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Urban[ism] Legend: The “Geographically Constrained Cities” Fantasy
One common argument against building new urban housing is that cities are geographically constrained by their natural and political boundaries, and thus can never build enough housing to bring prices...
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Is Zoning Popular? The Evidence is Weak
“Zoning and prohibition are the twin monstrosities born of the travail and abnormality of the World War.” — General P.L. Mitchell, a vocal opponent of zoning in Cincinnati, 1927 In my lonely war on US...
View ArticleNo, this study does NOT support refusal to build housing
A recent headline in the Forbes blog screams: “Additional Housing Won’t Make City More Affordable, Says Fed Study.” This blog post cites a Federal Reserve Study showing that adding 5 percent more...
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