Urbanism

This is a page that gets updated like a wiki. It represents my thoughts at the particular time I last edited it. The thoughts expressed here may not be the thoughts I have now.

Zoning

Liberal zoning. Let people develop what they want to on their land.

Building codes

Minimize regulation.

Building scalable cities

Grid layout. Latin America, China, Korea, Japan.

On-street parking

On-street parking heavily underutilizes land. Let market decide. Go japan.

Parking minimums

Eliminate them.

Bikeshare

More efficient than personal bike ownership in cities. Netherlands needs this.

Bikes and Trains

Bikes

Most efficient form of transit in terms of space required, cost, health benefits (cost).

Trains

Like why build highways lol?

The power of bike + train

Autonomous vehicles

  • Will not replace transit in the near term (hinges on post-work economy). Induced demand will yield higher trip numbers in vehicles, filling the gaps made by efficiency gains. Transit will likely still be competitive in terms of cost, and time during peak periods
  • Should be welcome in the urbanist movement. They yield significant safety improvements, a key goal of the movement. They also shift accountability onto corporations, which are more possible to hold accountable than individual drivers.

AVs + High speed rail

Huge potential.

City planning and the future

Post-work economy

No commutes? Significant portion of trips reduced (majority). People can live anywhere.

Drone delivery

Will heavily reduce in-person shopping and thus number of trips.

Overall

We may end up with significantly overbuilt cities. Not that anyone’s going to care since Americans can afford it. But not necessary good for competition at a multinational scale.