Planning

Harvard’s William Alonso showed that the value of residential land tends to increase from the rural uses on the urban fringe¹ to centers of economic activity, such as central business districts.²  read more »

Some Confuse a Homeowner’s Greatest Property Right With How Many Uses the Homeowner can Utilize for Their Home

A homeowner’s greatest property right is not how many uses a homeowner can use their home, but neighborhood protection from uses not beneficial to single-family homes.

Dallas is Losing Homeowners  read more »

The first phase of the Honolulu rail transit system is supposed to open at the end of this year, with trains serving nine of the planned 21 stations. But those plans may be put on hold because  read more »

Recently, exciting plans for Fair Park were unveiled at an architectural forum by Fair Park First, the nonprofit selected to transform and manage Fair Park’s transformation.  read more »

I hear a great deal about sustainability in the built environment that sounds both encouraging and delusional. These messages come from well intentioned environmentalists as well as corporate marketing departments. The general tone of the conversation is similar either way. Everyone can continue to live the way we do now, but by making a few minor adjustments we’ll transition away from coal, oil, and natural gas to benign materials and clean renewable energy. This transition will save households money, preserve nature, and be profitable for private enterprise.  read more »

In addition to restoring allegedly crumbling highways and transit lines, the 2021 infrastructure bill was supposed to provide tens of billions of dollars for building new infrastructure.  read more »

In a controversial ruling, the New York Court of Appeals recently decided that elephants are not people with constitutional rights. While this would seem to be a no-brainer, animal rights advocates believe that giving animals more rights is a natural progression from a few hundred years ago when only the aristocracy had what we conventionally regard as human rights.  read more »

Imagine that, on top of all our other problems, the United States had a shortage of pickup trucks. While many pickups are purchased for recreational purposes, they also play vital roles in construction, farming, forestry, and other industries.  read more »

Many surveys have found that the vast majority of Americans, including Millennials, prefer or aspire to live in single-family homes. But surveys rarely ask whether they prefer that single-family home to be in a low-density neighborhood or if they would mind living next to a bunch of apartment buildings.  read more »

Land ownership has shaped civilizations from their beginnings, with a constant interplay between great powers—the aristocracy, the state, the Church, the emperor—and those below them.  read more »