@allenstenhaus Understanding your own limitations, my broader point is that non-automobile-centric development patterns are required for a non-automobile-dependent lifestyle.

Transportation and sprawl are expensive in ways that are really hard to comprehend. Every additional mile or metre there is to travel everything has to cross, with costs in energy, vehicle capital and maintenance, and infrastructure. There are some activities which are inherently land-use dependent (e.g., agriculture, forestry, etc.) Much of everyday and urban life ... not so much. Even for small values of urbanities.

There's a large set of interests which have produced and sustained sprawl largely out of their own pecuniary interests. Countering that, locally and everywhere, at the political level, is key. And land use is tied to a huge set of other issues: general cost of living, inequality, housing access, global warming/climate change, amongst them. That's not going to happen overnight, but it can happen. Amsterdam and the Netherlands are an example of a place that made that choice in the 1970s and, yes, a half-century later, are reaping the rewards. (Those arrived in less than 50 years, but it's been a gradual process.)

Informational sources that help grow that awareness help. Some of those:

• StrongTowns (YT: https://yewtu.be/channel/UCTeYrzSQ3YCp3RovGH4y8Ew, blog: https://www.strongtowns.org/, podcast: https://www.strongtowns.org/podcast),

• Not Just Bikes (YT: https://yewtu.be/channel/UC0intLFzLaudFG-xAvUEO-A, blog: <>

• Shane Phillips (UCLA Lewis Center). His book The Affordable City is excellent https://islandpress.org/books/affordable-city. Also a Twitter feed: https://nitter.net/ShaneDPhillips

On the Fediverse, @Alon writes about transit and related issues.

@TheGibson

#StrongTowns #NotJustBikes #Transit #UrbanPlanning #CarFree #ShanePhillips #UCLALewisCenter

Episode 05: Market-Rate Development and Neighborhood Rents with Evan Mast

We’ve known for many years that building more homes helps keep prices in check at the regional or metro area level, but what about the house down the street? When a new apartment building goes up nearby, does the “supply effect” of more homes lower rents, or does the “demand effect” send a signal to nearby property owners and potential residents that causes rents to go up? Evan Mast of the Upjohn Institute joins Mike and Shane to discuss two recent papers he’s worked on that help shed light on this important and controversial question.

https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/2021/07/07/05-market-rate-development-and-neighborhood-rents-with-evan-mast/#72caa8688e8f5aeb6

Media: Ep_05_-_Market-Rate_Development_and_Neighborhood_Rents_with_Evan_Mast-7e5EMn6giPt8oBHsXhrsQz.mp3

#housing #UCLALewisCenter #ShaneDPhillips

In looking at various forms of power, one point that's increassingly clear to me is that in a mature and multipolar society what exists are multiple power centres, each often with the effective capability to say "no". The word veto comes directly from the Latin, for "I forbid", and comes from that culture's multipolar power structure, the Senate.

There's also a lesson from warfare and combat, which is that the ability to induce damage or cost on an enemy whilst avoiding it oneself is also powerful. This is the difference between melee and ranged weapons (hand-to-hand, or tooth-and-claw, vs. ballistic or projectile weapons, see also "time-ranged" weapons in the form of traps and snares). "You don't have to be there for it".

Camouflage and armour afford similar capabilities.

The dynamics enabling NIMBY attacks are that stalling tactics don't incure consts or liabilities for those engaging in them. Sometimes this has merits, it very often does not, e.g., the delay of a bike-lanes project which sees scores of additional cycling and pedestrian deaths due to street traffic.

#MoneyIsPower #TimeIsMoney #VetoPower #Obstructionism #NEPA #NIMBY #constructionCosts #construction #housing #UCLALewisCenter

Why does it cost so much to build things in America?

Researchers have ruled out some of the more obvious potential explanations for why these projects cost more in the US.

As transit researcher Alon Levy writes in a report for the Niskanen Center, “This is not about our wealth: there is no correlation between a country’s GDP per capita and its subway construction costs. Nor is it about geological factors: the biggest factor behind a project’s cost is what country it is in, and costs are fairly consistent even across different geologies ... This is purely institutional.”

And when it comes to roads and the bulk of the high costs — “the new construction bit” — Turner says even though he has “no idea why those prices are increasing,” he can “eliminate a lot of things.” Turner explains that common theories like unions or the way we’re building roads or where we’re building them (for example, in more urban areas) are not supported by statistical evidence.

Time is money, money is power, power is delaying transportation projects

https://www.vox.com/22534714/rail-roads-infrastructure-costs-america

h/t Shane D. Phillips / #UCLALewisCenter

#housing #construction #constructionCosts #NIMBY #NEPA #Obstructionism #VetoPower #TimeIsMoney #MoneyIsPower