Order Without Design: How Markets Shape Cities

Books

"This book emerges from a 55-year career in urban planning, and is illustrated by the author's real-world experience. Without understanding how markets work, urban planners are likely to design infrastructure and regulations that will adversely impact the functioning of cities. By contrast, urban economists review decisions and outcomes after the fact, often publishing their conclusions in specialized journals that fail to influence decision making. This book is a call for qualitative urban planners and quantitative urban economists to come together. Specifically, the book calls for urban economists to take a larger role in the process of operational urban planning. For example, land prices decrease the further away one gets from a city center. When land prices are high, households and firms consume less land; that is, they live in smaller homes and work in smaller offices. Population density then increases because the city is still a desirable place to be, and you can fit more people in smaller spaces. ...