Recent Streetsblog NYC posts about Economics

Robert Moses’s Fundamental Misunderstanding

| | 30 Comments
In the latest issue of the Regional Plan Association’s Spotlight on the Region newsletter, editor Alex Marshall has an outstanding essay responding to the recent burst of Robert Moses revisionism. An excerpt:   It all comes down to capacity. Like many people of his generation, I’m convinced, Moses essentially didn’t understand the different capabilities of […]

Another Free-Market Argument for Congestion Pricing

| | 8 Comments
An opinion piece in today’s New York Sun addresses the congestion-pricing incentives laid out in the Bush Administration’s new budget proposal. The article, by Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a former chief economist at the US Department of Labor who is now with the conservative Hudson Institute, argues that "the only effective way to reduce traffic congestion is […]

Launching the Campaign for Carbon Taxes

| | 4 Comments
Streetsblog contributor Charles Komanoff, along with Daniel Rosenblum, today announce the foundation of their new organization, the Carbon Tax Center. The Center’s mission is "to educate and inform policymakers, opinion leaders and the public, including grassroots organizations, about the benefits of and critical need for significant, rising and equitable taxes on carbon emissions from fossil […]

Making Hell’s Kitchen Less Hellish

| | 20 Comments
StreetFilms Ninth Avenue Renaissance Town Hall Meeting Running time: 3:35 Monday night was the first meeting of the Ninth Avenue Renaissance project. About 130 neighborhood stakeholders filled the gym at the Holy Cross School in Midtown to begin a process to transform Ninth Avenue from a dysfunctional, traffic-choked, polluted highway into, what organizer Christine Berthet […]

New German Community Models Car-Free Living

| | 2 Comments
The Vauban Department of Transportation gets to work. Schritt Tempo: Walking Speed. Freiburg, Germany is a place you need to know about if you are interested in models for reducing automobile dependence. Here is a great story by Isabelle de Pommereau from Wednesday’s Christian Science Monitor: FREIBURG, GERMANY: It’s pickup time at the Vauban kindergarten here at the edge […]