Contributor Blog

Samuel Staley
Samuel Staley is director of urban and land use policy for the Reason Foundation.

Planning Juno

21 April 2008 - 12:39pm

Many viewers may not fully appreciate movies as a visual story-telling medium, but that fact came home to me dramatically the other night while watching “Juno,” the off beat, smart and funny film that just snagged a best screenplay Oscar. The deliberate use of architecture and public spaces, in particular, was quite effective although you probably won’t find these references in plot summaries or synopses.

Economists vs. Planners? Complements, Not Substitutes

15 March 2008 - 1:33pm

Often, planners and economists seem to be at odds. Actually, a better description would be talking past each other—literally two ships passing in the night.

Planners often think economists are too narrowly focused on dollars, cents, and rational decisionmaking. Economists can’t understand why planners don’t recognize the real world of markets and why incentives matter—a lot.

When Planning Matters

12 March 2008 - 11:17am

Why plan? That’s an important question for a planning skeptic like myself. I’m not at all convinced that conventional public urban planning has much value, despite (or because of?) spending eight years on a city planning commission. Yet, I don’t consider myself an “antiplanner”. I’m happy to leave that role to my friend and virtual colleague Randal O’Toole at the Cato Institute. (He even runs a blog called “The Antiplanner”.)

Urban planning has a role even though, IMO, on balance, its application has had a negative impact on communities and cities. Notably, even the free market (and Nobel Prize winning) economist F.A. Hayek recognized a role for planning in his classic book on political economy The Constitution of Liberty.

The question is: what is planning’s role and, perhaps more importantly, how has this role changed or shifted in modern times?

Is eminent domain necessary for revitalizing cities?

9 January 2008 - 1:55pm

Planners are split on eminent domain—one group believes it’s a critical component of planning since it allows them to implement plans more quickly. Others believe eminent domain does more to destroy urbanism than build it up. I’ve weighed in on it numerous times, including this commentary published by Planetizen.

The Myth of the Urban Core

18 December 2007 - 9:58am

Question: What do Keybank Tower in Cleveland, the Kettering Tower in Dayton, and One Seagate in Toledo have in common?

Answer: They are their respective city’s tallest buildings, and they were built after their city’s population peaked.

Planning the Long Tail

26 November 2007 - 11:28am

One of the more powerful concepts to come out of the information and services economy is the Long Tail.

A Planning Contrarian's Reading List

15 November 2007 - 3:05pm

Transcontinental flights are a great time to catch up on reading, and a recent flight from San Jose to Chicago inspired this blog post. As I was reading book #1 (below), I realized that a number books have been published recently that have important things to say about cities although they might be dismissed too easily as reactionary, ideological, or simply not relevant to urban planning.

Slicing Water Planning With Okham's Razor

6 November 2007 - 9:10am

I first learned of Okham’s Razor in an undergraduate economics class. Also called the Law of Parsimony, the idea states that the simplest of two competing ideas or theories is preferable to the more complicated one.

Horsepower vs Horse Power and Sustainability

24 October 2007 - 5:47am

How sustainable is the internal combustion engine? The answer depends, in part, on your historical perspective. This point becomes startlingly evident in a recent article by UCLA doctoral student Eric Morris in the most recent issue of Access magazine. The magazine publishes accessible versions of academic research and is published by the University of California Transportation Center at Berkeley.

Are planners ready for the Drew Carey (not so free) freeway?

16 October 2007 - 5:43am

Technology creates new challenges and opportunities, and this came home to me a couple of weeks ago when I was previewing a rough cut of Gridlock: Hell on Wheels, a video on traffic congestion released by Reason Foundation today. In the video, Comedian Drew Carey makes the following off-the-cuff comment on a morning drive-time radio show: “I would love to own a freeway in LA.”

The Politics of NIMBY

14 September 2007 - 10:57am
The following came through on a planning list serve, and I thought it raised several very provocative points that speak to the core of how we plan in the U.S.
“I heard, though I cannot remember the source, of a municipality that countered predictable neighborhood opposition to a higher density TOD proposal by broadening the review process to the whole community. I believe that the actual adjacent property owners were deemed to have a conflict of interest: i.e. their backyard versus overall better transit and housing opportunities for the entire town.

Hybrid Nation?

5 September 2007 - 8:27am

My Toyota Prius just turned 100,000. That’s quite a milestone for a car and it may be a harbinger of things to come. Many planners are betting so-called “peak oil” will undermine our car culture because we won’t have the fuel to feed them. The history of my Prius suggests otherwise.

What Gotham Tells Us about Mass Transit

19 June 2007 - 7:14am
I recently got taken to the proverbial wood shed on Planetizen Interchange for arguing that mass transit is unsustainable. So, I decided that it might be useful to look at the mass transit system that seems to be the most successful in nation: New York City. New York has the density and economic activity to sustain transit—perhaps a best-case scenario in the U.S.

Mass Transit Unsustainability

7 June 2007 - 7:57am

The solution to so-called "automobile dependence" within the contemporary planning community is almost alway more mass transit: more trains and buses. But is this realistic, particualarly given current strategies and approaches to providing mass transit? Most investments in mass transit are patently unsustainable, requiring huge investments in capital and dramatic reductions in mobility (measured by travel time) to achieve ridership goals.

Proof of mass transit's unsustainability is obvious to anyone willing to look at it objectively:

Chinese urbanism and the scale of development

13 May 2007 - 6:05am

SHANGHAI, CHINA--I've been a fan of New Urbanism for several years, but I've always considered myself an urban "pluralist"--someone who doesn't believe there is an "objective" or general urban form that is persistently successful over long periods of time. Indeed, Bob Bruegmann's thesis in Sprawl: A Compact History, suggests that urban form changes and evolves over time, although generally in a less dense direction.

Communist China's GPS congestion management capitalism

10 May 2007 - 6:46am

BEIJING, 9 MAY 2007--Anyone questioning China's potential to become the dominant player in the 21st century and beyond need look no further than the Beijing Transportation Information Center. The entrepreneurial leader of the center, Mr. WANG gang, has lead the development of the most innovative system for managing traffic congestion I've seen, putting U.S. systems to shame and leapfrogging over London's cutting edge signal coordinatin system. Rather than try to regulate congestion by limiting automobile use, they have figured out a way to use technology to make its use more efficient.

Beijing's traffic nightmare and public transit

9 May 2007 - 7:26am

BEIJING--When I first learned that I wouldn't be able to rent a car in Beijing, I was disappointed. That's how I usually break away from the business "bubble" to learn something about a city. But, it didn't take more than an hour to realize that I was better off with a local driver than tackling it myself.  Driving habits, combined with roads choking with pedestrians, cars, buses, and taxis, convinced me I needed to leave the driving to a "pro".

Sustainable Development Needs To Embrace Technology

24 April 2007 - 1:32pm

I've been spending a lot of time over the past couple of years examining the planning literature on sustainable development. Sustainable development, as a concept, remains vague. For those interested, take a look at my recent article in the journal Property Management.

Getting real about planning and mobility

6 March 2007 - 1:48pm

After reading through dozens of long range transportation plans, I have to wonder if the planning profession is serious about improving mobility. By mobility, I mean improving the ability, speed, and efficiency of getting from point A to point B.