Editor Sommer Mathis over at The Atlantic Cities has taken to making stuff up. In a recent post she reported on a dispute in the city of Seattle over minimum parking requirements relating to multi-unit buildings. She said:
Defenders of suburban-style development like Wendell Cox and Joel Kotkin would argue that these young people just don’t understand how their lives and desires are going to change once they start families. Single-family, detached homes with a quarter acre of land and two cars in the garage are suddenly going to look a lot better to all these idealistic, bicycle riding twenty-somethings once the reality of parenthood sets in.
Kotkin and Cox also worry that developers and city planners rushing to meet the youth-driven demand for denser housing options that don’t necessarily include parking are shooting themselves in the foot.
The only problem is that I have never commented on minimum parking requirements. I checked with Joel Kotkin and he advises that he has never covered the issue.
Mathis continues (after an citing a quote by Joel Kotkin article in Forbes):
What’s funny about these assumptions is their total lack of faith in the free market.
Of course, since our alleged positions on minimum parking requirements are figments of Mathis’ imagination, her "free market" conclusion misses the mark. Indeed, the most destructive impact on urban land markets today is urban growth boundaries and "winner picking" land use restrictions that deny people their preferences (as my Wall Street Journal piece, California’s War on Suburbia, argued on Saturday). I am most concerned about these because of their potential for hampering the metropolitan economy, interfering with upward mobility and increasing poverty (I suspect Joel would agree). Moreover, young households soon figure out that they need more than the 4th floor (or 40th floor) balcony to raise a child.
Comments
14 responses to “Making Stuff Up at Atlantic Cities”
I agree. The parking issue is not limited for a these two cities. But also it is also for the another cities as well. The rising a buildings in a cities causing a trouble for a parking and due to a heavy increase in buildings the parking space gone down. But still, if it possible to create a proper plan for a creating a buildings and leave some sufficient space for parking then it can solve a parking problems.New kitchen cabinets
I see that wendell now feels that he has to acknowledge the existence of his critics. That is a set in the right direction.
Wendell Cox is related with the public policy firm, which is under the region of the united states.Its main aim is to increase the services of the transportation
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As usual, Wendell Cox distorts what his opponents say and throws out a red herring claiming the Atlantic Cities person said something she actually did not, based on the quote provided.
I think she is correct that Cox and Kotkin would argue that young families would prefer single family houses, even if they started their families in dense settings. Both argue that there is still nearly as much a preference for single family houses and the suburbs as ever, despite increasing evidence from the Census and elsewhere that such preferences may be declining significantly, particularly among so-called “Millenials.”
In my view, Cox and Kotkin are aging “old farts” who just can’t believe that American preferences may be evolving. These two and others with similar views persist in spreading outright falseholds such as the recent brainless Wall Street Journal editorial claiming “”Americans don’t want to live in Ray LaHood’s car-free utopia”…
First of all, LaHood and other advocates of rational transportation policies such as myself have NEVER claimed to want to do away with automobiles–we certainly believe that many people will still want automobiles and single family houses–just that the current overwhelming motor vehicle dominance would be much more in balance with “auto indedependent” modes such as transit, walking and bicycling once all the “externalities” of driving and the suburbs are “internalized” into the cost of driving and suburban living. This is what people like Todd Litman and many, many others are arguing for, NOT some motor vehicle free “utopia” such as in Callenbach’s Ecotopia novel, for example.
And like a commenter above, I’m glad that Cox feels compelled to respond to his critics…that’s something he hasn’t been doing a lot of. Oh yes…spare me the “what people want” argument…that’s a non-starter until we know for sure how people actually make choices once legitimate externalities have been internalized into the cost of driving and living in the suburbs and exurbs.
Gee, what a concept: auto independent! A significant and growing minority in this country appear to want this to be possible in a lot more places besides New York City, San Francisco or Boston; is Cox and Kotkin AGAINST this possible for those who want it, even though it would also have many benefits for thos who continue to drive, e.g., less traffic?
And Cox has never had a problem with intensification for the market that wants it. The question is “why the MUL’s?”. It’s the intensification brigade that want to shoot the sprawlers in the legs – not the other way around.
Well, stuffing the city with buildings and apartments is not going to be fruitful unless there is a proper planning to provide ample parking spaces to the vehicle owners.
Regards,
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Well, Editor Sommer Mathis has done a right prediction of the upcoming problems in the urban areas pertaining to the inappropriate parking spaces.
Regards,
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Since our alleged positions on minimum parking requirements are figments of Mathis’agination, her “free market” conclusion misses the mark. cell phone spy software
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