Showing all posts tagged #urban-planning:
August 26th, 2024
Earlier this summer, I co-organized a month-long 1,300-person "popup village" in Healdsburg, CA called Edge Esmeralda. This gathering was incredibly fun and rewarding in its own right, and it was also a huge accelerant to the creation of the permanent ...
July 15th, 2024
One thing I like about Georgist land taxes is they reflect a deep-seated intuition many people have that land should be owned by the community, while still employing markets to ensure efficient use of this limited resource.
People feel that land is sp...
September 7th, 2023
Most roads are paved with asphalt. Unfortunately, there are a lot of problems with asphalt. Bricks, cobblestones, and pavers are often much better options, because:
1. Asphalt degrades fast, so once you account for maintenance, it's more expensive it ...
May 18th, 2023
America hasn't built many walkable places in the last few decades, but there are a few exceptions. While collecting a list of these special places, I was shocked to discover that most are in the Southeast.
My mental image of contemporary southern dev...
November 2nd, 2021
People aim to maximize access and space when deciding where to live.
All things equal, most people like living in places with easy access to their day-to-day life. It's nice to be able to walk your kids to kindergarten, and it's easier to keep a socia...
July 10th, 2021
Alain was interviewed by our friend Anthony for a Brazilian urbanism blog called Caos Planejado, and we thought it would be fun to cross-post it here. They discussed Brazilian cities, municipal financing, what it was like to live in NYC in the time of ...
December 23rd, 2020
Mobility is central to living in every city. In this episode, we discussed how different communities tackle the question of transportation, and how culture shapes how different transport technologies get adopted.RSS · Apple Podcasts · Spotify · Overcas...
August 16th, 2020
Natan Gesher sent me the following email after reading my post about why flaking is so widespread in San Francisco, and I thought you all might find it interesting too:
I saw your blog posts about flaking and wanted to share something I've observed fr...
August 15th, 2020
Every place has some dirty secrets, even Disney World. We all have to get rid of waste somehow! In this episode, the Bertauds and I discuss methods of sanitation and waste management from around the world, and how these hidden systems shape our cities....
July 5th, 2020
Alain and Marie-Agnes raised three children while living their nomadic lifestyle. So in this episode, we dug into how their role as parents shaped how they experience cities. Join us as we roam Bangkok, Guadalajara, Sana'a, Paris, Port-au-Prince, NYC a...
April 25th, 2020
I'm starting a podcast with my friends, Marie-Agnes and Alain Bertaud, who also happen to be the most interesting couple I know. Over the course of this first conversation, we traveled all around the globe for a whirlwind tour of the adventurous life t...
September 2nd, 2018
This was originally published in Nov 2015.
When I first stumbled across the streetcar vs bus rapid transit (BRT) debate, I was strongly biased towards streetcars. My opinion was largely shaped by the few weeks I spent in Berlin this past summer. While...
June 29th, 2018
The way we live is shaped by our infrastructure—the public spaces, building codes, and utilities that serve a city or region. It can act as the foundation for thriving communities, but it can also establish unhealthy patterns when designed poorly.For d...
May 30th, 2018
I originally published these notes in April of last year in one of my old blogs.
These notes come from reading two blog posts from the wonderful Urban Kchoze blog:Urban kchoze: Japanese zoning (here is the annotated and cached copy)Urban kchoze: eucli...
May 21st, 2018
I originally published this in May of last year in Idea Collector, one of my old blogs.
Epistemic status: This is a quick write up of my personal experience wandering Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo last May. I'd be curious to learn how it compares to objectiv...
February 13th, 2018
Dan Wang emailed me with some interesting additional hypotheses regarding the question of flaking that I raised last week:
I liked your piece on flaking. When I moved to New York, I found that flaking declined dramatically. So I think that any piece t...