I'd imagine that this + very generous unemployment benefits ending can help explain a good chunk of the 'vibecession.' We had a very generous welfare state for approximately two years and then the rug got pulled out from under people - and they remembered!
very interesting; this is something that folks have long suspected as a factor in the post-covid downturn in consumer sentiment and it is good to see the effect empirically documented
Tomorrow's engineers aren't learning about induced demand.
"3 [of 7] textbooks omitted the idea entirely, whereas the others offered only partial coverage."
"The engineering textbooks reviewed here leave students unprepared to understand induced travel."
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
New residential buildings in Gowanus. Source: https://www.crainsnewyork.com/real-estate/boom-times-continue-major-new-gowanus-projects/
Upzonings in New York City produced substantial increases in housing supply. Source: https://www.urban.org/research/publication/how-big-upzonings-affect-housing-supply
When NYC rezoned Brooklyn's Gowanus neighborhood to allow high-density residential uses along a cleaned-out canal, it hoped to attract thousands of new housing units.
That's exactly what it got, new research comparing upzoned areas to similar, non-upzoned areas shows: www.urban.org/research/pub...
I’m gonna be the cranky contrarian here and loudly say “nope”:
1) we don’t lack for places to install solar,
2) above-ground parking is a blight on our cities,
3) it should be redeveloped into better uses, and
4) putting solar panels above parking lots is an obstacle to developing them.
All counties with less than 25% of their population facing a high rent burden. It's basically a bunch of rural areas + SF
many do not know this but a big success of SF nimbyism is having one of the lowest % of rent burdened households in the country (by displacing all the poor people)
"Sure, Alien is about an alien. But, on a deeper level, it's the story about the horrors of a cartoonishly evil company with unchecked power. The Weyland-Yutani Corporation is an extreme form of what's known in economics as a monopsony."
I would go on to guess that most NIMBYs strongly prefer traditional architecture. But that doesn't matter because the style is not their main objection. They do not like dense housing.
Also I'm sure many of you have seen these surveys showing people prefer traditional architecture.
But, they all force people to choose. Just because you prefer traditional doesn't mean you want it. In reality, most people would say "none of the above" because they do not want a new building.
People don't like when new buildings don't fit in with the style of the neighborhood - but the effect of the style of the building is tiny. Mostly, NIMBYism is motivated by new buildings being taller than surroundings.
That and the other culprits that explain way more: parking and affordability.
When you ask people to rate how attractive each building is on a 0 to 1 scale (1 being "very attractive") the modern buildings were MORE attractive.
We had some open-ended questions and many people actually mentioned how they liked the look of modern new buildings, and wanted to live in them!
And NIMBYism also is not a response to 'ugly' buildings. I surveyed people if they'd support the construction of different modern or brick buildings in their neighborhood and support was ... nearly identical!
Crazy how SEPTA continues to grow ridership despite being actively strangled by the state GOP
That's insane.
New Abundance & Growth Fund team blog:
Come for the broadside on the "zoned capacity delusion", stay for Missing Massive jokes & cheeky footnotes
Megacity housing production reform will require slow, wide-area incrementalism *and* fast, targeted Missing Massive
open.substack.com/pub/abundanc...
ETA and other civic orgs are urging NY not to require two operators on every train.
One-person train operation (OPTO) is a standard practice used on every subway system around the world—including on the MTA.
This bill would hurt riders and lock NY's transit system in the past.
tinyurl.com/etatpto
Ok, now over to the less magnitude but more immediate car purchase by SEPTA: these cars are long-in-the-tooth and no where near as operationally efficient as EMUs but the situation is urgent. The question is are there enough electric locos available to haul them…?
This the national security/foreign policy side of why we need institutional reforms for multiparty democracy asap. It's not just about democracy & the rule of law at home. It needs to be the case that the Democrats can lose an election without this ever happening again in international relations.
Local politicians should be funding studies NOW so they're complete and ready to be taken off the shelf in 2028. If they wait, they'll likely just get killed in 2032
Policymakers really need to let go of this idea that rental housing is intrinsically inferior and homeownership needs to be considered the normative default for everyone. The policies that flow from this view inevitably end up screwing over actually existing renters.
The DC streetcar somehow:
—Has no direct connection to the Metro
—Requires people to walk through a parking garage to get to Union Station
—Has no dedicated lanes
—Has tiny bus shelter stops, positioned way too close together
—Runs at the speed of a tortoise, essentially
Lack of direct connection to Metro is arguably the biggest failure with DC Streetcar. Walk between them is 6 min & indirect, dissuading many people from ever making it. Moreover, this is the map Metro riders see. You don't see the streetcar on there. These conspire to discourage streetcar use.
Bruh.
> Replacing the wage tax with a non-distortionary land value tax would bring 26,000 jobs from the suburbs into Philadelphia. Such gains triple when we allow for productivity agglomeration forces.
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Send this analysis to every single staffer and elected in City Hall. Just painful knowing how much tax revenue and transit ridership the City forgoes every day while continuing to stifle activity through things like small business BIRT enforcement
Real-time SEPTA arrival data will arrive at 10 bus and trolley stops beginning in May via digital "e-paper" display screens. Which stops and neighborhoods will get one? You can weigh in. billypenn.com/2026/03/24/s...
There was ONE ATC in the tower at LGA during last night's crash.
ONE ATC, at LGA!, dealing w ALL air and ground traffic, including a plane filling w a strange smell and no gate to return to.
The Pentagon wants $200B for a vanity war, but our ATC towers are empty.
Budgets are moral documents.
High-speed rail is moving slowly due to inadequate funding. An EIFD in LA county is a game changer that could bring HSR to LA in the 2030s by funding almost all of Palmdale-LA, electrify Metrolink and finish LinkUS, and transform regional transportation in Southern California. 🧵
The Philadelphia Housing Authority's purchasing spree continues, with 200 units obtained between Temple University and Fishtown: www.inquirer.com/real-estate/...
YIMBYs have proudly rooted our analysis in academic econ + common sense ("housing bans tend to ban housing")
But proposals like §901 go far beyond academic literature, leaving us with think tank guesses
Today's Urban Institute paper claiming the loopholes aren't actually good enough is concerning