Blogs

Radio host, television personality and President of Denver’s Independence Institute Jon Caldara has announced progress toward placing the “Fix Our Damn Roads” initiative on the Colorado ballot.

Caldara provided an update to the campaign in a recent email:  read more »

On May 3, Canada’s Financial Post, the nation’s leading business daily, published my commentary entitled: “Doug Ford was right: Toronto housing won’t be affordable unless we develop the Greenbelt: The PCs could have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to effectively deal with the housing-affordability crisis.”  read more »

Perhaps no region in the world is more associated with talent than the once-booming San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley. In the first four years of the decade, the area netted an average of 10,000 domestic migrants annually. But by 2016, the tide had turned. About 12,000 residents fled San Francisco that year, and the net outflow for 2017 climbed to 25,000.  read more »

It has long been known by economists, but ignored by planners, that urban containment policies create speculators markets. This has been especially evident in Vancouver, the third most unaffordable market in the Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey, and Toronto, which has experienced record breaking house cost escalation relative to incomes since enacting its “Places to Grow” urban containment policy in the middle 2000s.  read more »

As George Bernard Shaw is reported to have said, Britain and America are two countries separated by a common language. So too, America and Australia, not to mention America and Canada, New Zealand, and elsewhere.  read more »

For years, wishing thinking planners and others have imagined a “return to the city.” Of course, one cannot return to where they have never lived, so the whole concept was flawed from the beginning. While the suburbs did less well than before a few years of the Great Financial Crisis and its aftermath, they have experienced a steady increase in net domestic migration in more recent years.  read more »

The recent Uber fatality of bicyclist Elaine Herzberg, struck by an autonomous car fatality in Tempe (Phoenix, Arizona area) raises serious concerns. Bern Grush, an expert in autonomous vehicles, offers a sobering analysis of the situation.  read more »

The Sunday Times reports an ominous finding for London (the Greater London Authority, as opposed to the larger metropolitan area that includes the suburban development outside the greenbelt), with a murder rate that exceeded that of the city of New York for the first time (in February).  read more »

The Maryland Transportation Administration, which operates the Baltimore transit system, has closed the Baltimore subway for a month for critical repairs.  read more »

Patrik Schumacher, managing partner of Zaha Hadid Architects, and consultant Wendell Cox join Aaron M. Renn on his podcast to speak on their beliefs and what it's like to challenge the urbanist conventional wisdom.

You can find their conversation here.