Random stuff I find interesting and you may not.
People are more productive in cities. As a result, people move to cities to earn higher wages but some of their productivity and wages is eaten up by land prices. How much? In a new paper Philip G. Hoxie, Daniel Shoag, and Stan Veuger show that net wages (that is wages after housing costs) used … Read more
Mayors and urban planners have crucial roles in the management of cities. They must help cities adapt rapidly when confronted with external shocks—the pandemic is only the latest one of these. To be a prudent and efficient janitor is the main task of mayors. However, mayors and urban planners feel obliged to invent more glorious … Read more
People are moving out of Manhattan and San Francisco, but about half of those Manhattan exiles went no farther than Brooklyn or the Hamptons, and most of the former San Franciscans moved to a new home no more than 60 miles away from the old one. Containment is holding, for now. But it’s not just … Read more
Why are cities so uniformly far to the left politically? Some hypotheses: 1. They attract the educated professionals who are on the left. But suburbs also attract educated professionals, and they are not so uniformly left. 2. They create many more externalities, and you can only tolerate living there if you have faith in government. … Read more
City councils across America almost seem intent on proving that the best cure for a bad idea is a good idea, though, they are going about it in a rather interesting new way. The Washington Post reports that a Black Lives Matter street mural – which stood for a month and a half and greeted … Read more