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 ...
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 ...
July 1st, 2021
While the startup cities industry is still small, it is already quite heterogeneous. Each project has its own distinct set of goals, motivations, and scope. However, this diversity isn’t fully captured by the vocabulary we use right now.
To help mysel...
April 15th, 2019
I'll continue to update this as I try more book pairings when I travel. 🙂
London, England 💂♀️
The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World — Favorite book I've read so far in...
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 22nd, 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...
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...