tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62684922008-09-06T11:31:19.723-07:00A blog exploring the intersection of economic thinking and urban planning/real estate development and related big-think themes.Peter Gordonnoreply@blogger.comBlogger901125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6268492.post-81482353703901396992008-09-06T10:53:00.000-07:002008-09-06T11:31:19.743-07:00

Technological change is here to stay and probably accelerating, as we speak. These are truisms. The Economist (Sep. 6, 2008) includes "The road ahead ... The world's carmakers have mapped out their route to a greener future." Whether it is prompted by prices, regulators or popular sentiment, progess towards lower emissions is a sure bet. This is the reason to part company with the Gore-Kyoto

Peter Gordonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6268492.post-16705123424057287882008-09-04T16:47:00.000-07:002008-09-04T16:54:52.406-07:00

Re Calvin Beale's work on counties (see below), I see that some bloggers are stuck wondering whether "rural" American Sarah Palin can appeal to "non-rural" America. Beale showed us that those distinctions are relics. David Brooks makes the same point in humorous fashion.

Peter Gordonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6268492.post-57772590294079920622008-09-04T13:31:00.000-07:002008-09-04T13:38:49.890-07:00

"Infrastructure" has a benign ring; "mega-projects" sounds a little scary and "pork" is, unfortunately, the four-letter word that is often the most accurate. Bent Flyvbjerg has made this point best in recent years. A very nice update appears in the current Miller-McCune. Hat tip to Barry Klein.

Peter Gordonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6268492.post-75955260305593848452008-09-04T12:09:00.001-07:002008-09-04T12:19:51.993-07:00

Today's NY Times includes an obit for demographer Calvin Beale. Over the years, he and USDA colleagues have mapped and categorized counties in ways that are indispensible these days that the urban-suburban-exurban-rural continuum is not what it used to be. Central city vs. suburbs distinctions are stale -- but still invoked by many who should know better. Beale was among the first to suggest a

Peter Gordonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6268492.post-12094636243393908182008-09-03T10:28:00.000-07:002008-09-03T10:52:55.988-07:00

Teachers of economics explain consumer sovereignty, but are obliged to also explain the huge advertising industry without succumbing to the left's cliche about sinister consumer manipulation. John Wanamaker famously remarked that half of what he spends on advertising is wasted, but he could never figure out which half. But the promise of modern search and data collection techniques is supposed

Peter Gordonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6268492.post-69023650092367999522008-09-02T18:06:00.000-07:002008-09-02T18:28:39.159-07:00

I blogged about the GM Volt (on Aug 23) after being puzzled by the TV ads shown during the Olympics. I know a bit more now, having listened to an interview with Jonathan Rauch on Econtalk. The most fascinating part of the story is Rauch's conclusion that the big corporation has forced itself to go to a sort of Schelling self-command game. They set wildly optimistic deadlines to create and

Peter Gordonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6268492.post-73310550818325370752008-08-31T16:55:00.000-07:002008-08-31T17:05:18.399-07:00

There are competing claims as to whether Mark Twain or Will Rodgers had fun with all the things that many people "know" that are not true. That's life. But in the an internet world, there is hope. I often try to link to the data that Wendell Cox gathers and posts. His new post is dear to my heart, because I hear all the time about the "fact" that most western Europeans cheerfully use public

Peter Gordonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6268492.post-52718943925218292712008-08-29T09:01:00.001-07:002008-08-29T09:29:43.502-07:00

I am not sure how much NAFTA-bashing occurred in Denver this week. But trade-bashing has been a staple for all the Democrats through the campaign. This morning's LA Times includes "Opening the spigot for liquid natural gas imports ... With the help of Mexico President Felipe Calderon, San Diego-based Sempra Energy on Tuesday inaugurated its $1-billion Energia Costa Azul gas import terminal to

Peter Gordonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6268492.post-90609863859365802692008-08-27T07:33:00.000-07:002008-08-27T08:01:23.749-07:00

What can you say about people who get teary-eyed at a political convention? The TV camera people found a few of these at the Democrats' convention and they will probably find some at the Republicans' convention next week. Hayek had some things to say about dangerous confusions when we mix up the "micro-cosmos" (he referred to families, tribes, extended families, etc.) and the "macro-cosmos" (he

Peter Gordonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6268492.post-10973221616443594952008-08-25T08:01:00.000-07:002008-08-25T08:25:31.611-07:00

Here is the lead story in today's LA Times: "FBI saw threat of loan crisis ... A top official warned of widening mortage fraud in 2004, but the agency focused its resources elsewhere." I recall that when Leslie Stahl interviewed Alan Greenspan on "60 Minutes", after he left office and was pushing his book, she asked him about the credit crunch and his answer was: "We didn't see it coming."

Peter Gordonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6268492.post-29344944693635342442008-08-23T15:13:00.000-07:002008-08-23T15:29:31.270-07:00

On July 2, the WSJ's Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., wrote "What is GM Thinking?" I have to admit that it took Jenkins' column to get me to see the light. GM's investment in its 2010 Chevy Volt is a political and not a market move. Now we see that during NBC's Olympics coverage, GM runs a strange ad for its 2010 Chevy Volt. I cannot buy it for a while (and Holman suggests I would not want to anyway

Peter Gordonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6268492.post-80543587185499116742008-08-22T15:16:00.000-07:002008-08-22T15:36:35.569-07:00

The Apple 1984 TV commercial is many people's all-time favorite. This week's Forbes includes "DIY Democracy". That's part of it's series on grass-roots innovation. Here is the former. "The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error." William Jennings Bryan thundered those words at the 1896 Democratic convention.

Peter Gordonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6268492.post-66892198972858249302008-08-21T09:03:00.000-07:002008-08-21T09:44:52.951-07:00

There are many old jokes about the dangers that lurk when the legislature is in session. This morning's LA Times includes "Legislature takes aim at urban sprawl ... A Senate bill calling for financial incentives to control greenhouse gases would be the first such law in the nation" and "A smart plan for smart growth". Wendell Cox also blogs about all this. I have blogged about this stuff often

Peter Gordonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6268492.post-72831411373980900892008-08-20T10:25:00.000-07:002008-08-20T10:53:37.514-07:00

University of Paris Professors Pierre Kopp and Remy Prudhomme made few friends in France when they showed that reallcoating road space from cars to public transit in central Paris did more harm that good. (Ch 13 in this volume but available in French from various sources). Too few Parisians behaved in ways that planners dreamed of and would not switch from autos to buses and trams, even though

Peter Gordonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6268492.post-23289213164934023302008-08-18T12:55:00.000-07:002008-08-18T13:18:42.505-07:00

There are always reasonable people who differ over whether the glass is half-full or half-empty. Yesterday's NY Times Magazine ran a respectful feature on Nouriel Roubini ("Dr. Doom"). Doomsayers are a-dime-a-dozen, but what to do when smart people get into it? The article is slightly more nuanced than its title and the interview may have been even more nuanced. But the ending is odd. Roubini

Peter Gordonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6268492.post-86163479186139625672008-08-16T10:42:00.000-07:002008-08-16T11:06:14.250-07:00

Some of us placed an op-ed in yesterday's LA Daily News questioning the wisdom and the merits of raising the sales tax by one-half cent (possibly to be voted on in LA County in November)to pay for new transit and transportation infrastructure, mainly more rail transit. It was the old story, looking at ridership and costs and benefits. Silly us. That's the exact phrase ("Silly you.") that LA

Peter Gordonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6268492.post-23506592051311069472008-08-15T15:04:00.000-07:002008-08-15T15:19:07.056-07:00

Are they statists because they are pessimists, or are they pessimists because they are statists? Don Boudreaux argues that it is the latter. That's creepy. But it does resolve a paradox because we are, for the most part, talking about fairly smart and cosmopolitan people -- including people who embrace climate doomsday predictions predicated on hundred-year climate change projections that

Peter Gordonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6268492.post-83880172362449304012008-08-13T16:13:00.000-07:002008-08-13T16:36:52.160-07:00

Here is HUD's new version of a housing affordability index. But it's actually a housing+transportation affordability index. Urban economics is all about the trade-offs between rents paid for housing and accessibility savings. The authors note that, While housing costs are well-understood, transportation costs are often dramatically underestimated or ignored, creating an urban information gap.

Peter Gordonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6268492.post-78961058633654975762008-08-12T10:53:00.000-07:002008-08-12T11:03:11.130-07:00

The legislative and policy-making process has been likened to a sausage factory, so no one knows how this will come out. But in light of the discussion of applying economic principles to public policy problems (exotic and even sinister for some, but not for others), here is today's WSJ editorializing on peak-load pricing at airports. No reports of widespread fainting spells yet. Fixing the

Peter Gordonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6268492.post-48752565200577329342008-08-10T08:58:00.000-07:002008-08-10T09:18:27.282-07:00

The Economist of August 9 cites the petition by 100 or so U. of Chicago faculty opposing the the naming of a campus instititute after Milton Friedman ("One great brain v. many small ones ... The trouble with Friedman"). The signers were concerned over the "ideological and disciplinary preference" that the naming carried with it. One's opponents are always the ones weighed with the ideological

Peter Gordonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6268492.post-88870588421149900882008-08-05T12:22:00.001-07:002008-08-05T12:38:17.294-07:00

Much has been said and written on the passing of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Today's WSJ reprints his speech at Harvard in 1978: Very well-known representatives of your society, such as George Kennan, say: We cannot apply moral criteria to politics. Thus we mix good and evil, right and wrong and make space for the absolute triumph of absolute Evil in the world. On the contrary, only moral criteria

Peter Gordonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6268492.post-80668155121621153032008-08-03T08:18:00.001-07:002008-08-03T08:29:23.934-07:00

Jobs-housing "balance" is often invoked by urban planners and others as if it had meaning. It is presumed that commuting can be minimized if the balance is somehow achieved. But the idea has problems. First, at what geographic scale? Second, there is more to life that commuting, which is traded off against many other priorities. Third, a certain amount of balancing will occur naturally

Peter Gordonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6268492.post-55828398284232735292008-08-02T12:30:00.000-07:002008-08-02T12:40:54.602-07:00

I have several times cited to Bumsoo Lee's findings re employment in U.S. metros. In 2000, the New York metro area included about 9.42 million jobs and about 10 percent were located in the two CBDs of Manhattan. Thanks, to Martin Kaplinsky, I just came across a gem of a report (not online) titled Residence and Employment in the New York Metropolitan Area, 1950 (State of New York, Department of

Peter Gordonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6268492.post-65225992191150172732008-08-02T07:13:00.001-07:002008-08-02T07:24:50.961-07:00

Commons problems are everywhere, often right before our noses. This week's Economist includes "Commons Sense ... Why it still pays to study medieval English landholding and Sahelian nomadism". The piece cites Elinor Ostrom's work and the many examples of spontaneous cooperation to resolve commons abuse. (My own favorite is Robert Ellickson's Order without Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes.) And

Peter Gordonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6268492.post-89454046863512750912008-07-30T18:31:00.000-07:002008-07-31T12:45:50.462-07:00

Candidate Barak Obama is the one with the fancy resume and the devotion of "elites" here and abroad. He now states that the effects of any new drilling for oil will not be felt for about 20 years. But just a couple of weeks ago, he and many other elites were all over "the speculators" for pushing up prices at the pump via their nefarious actions on oil futures markets. Elites ought to be held

Peter Gordonnoreply@blogger.com