Yes, that is my frequent assertion here, but in reverse: not everyone wants to live at suburban densities, and those who complain that something else other than a McSuburb gets built don’t understand real reality.

I’ve seen more than one instance where the obsession with increasing the modal share of transit over-rode other considerations, resulting in the creation of suburban slums just so elected officials and planners could then make boasts about high transit utilization.

The assertion is purportedly about what the dirty virnmintulists want. And just because affordable housing gets built in a dense area doesn’t make it a slum.

DS

Environmentalists today want to use the same policy [of keep[ing] people too poor to drive]:

To which Dan responded:

Bullsh–. If the best you can do is make ludicrous stuff up, why bother pretending to construct an argument?

Dan, I must disagree with your assertion regarding making this up.

I’ve seen more than one instance where the obsession with increasing the modal share of transit over-rode other considerations, resulting in the creation of suburban slums just so elected officials and planners could then make boasts about high transit utilization.

The Antiplanner wrote:

It is worth noting that the most congested cities, according to Inrix, also tend to be the most compact, i.e., have the highest population densities.

To which Dan responded:

That is because people want to be there. That is how reality works; dense areas have always been busy and crowded. That is how reality works. When cheap energy is no longer available, the car problem will begin to lessen, then go away, then the market will demand transit.

To an extent, I agree with Dan. But the people that want to be there are frequently self-selected – they want to be in crowded (and frequently congested) urban areas, and a fair number of them do not own private motor vehicles. But that does not mean that the rest of the population of the United States wants to live in the same densities as those found in the five counties that make up New York City:

Bronx Co.(pers/square mile of land area) 31,709.3 (housing units/square mile) 11,674.8
Kings Co.(p/sq. m) 34,916.6 (du/sq. m) 13,183.9
New York Co.(p/sq. m) 66,940.1 (du/sq. m) 34,756.7
Queens Co.(p/sq. m) 20,409.0 (du/sq. m) 7,481.6
Richmond Co.(p/sq. m) 7,587.9 (du/sq. m) 2,804.3

The way to convince conservative-minded people that the American Community Survey is worthwhile is not to say that it is used to distribute social spending. It is more persuasive to say that lots of government agencies will be making assumptions about the public, and it is much better that: (1) they use real data instead of relying on various likely biased academic projections; (2) the survey is done only once and not separately by hundreds of state and federal agencies; (3) the survey is much more anonymous when done by a number crunching agency far removed from the action agencies; and (4) the data is very widely used by private businesses so the accuracy of the data helps make the whole economy much more efficient.

Getting rid of the ACS is penny-wise and pound-foolish.

Yes of course. The assertion that the uppity Kenyan food stamp president is destroying Merka by not drilling is nincompoopery.

BTW, its getting almost to the point you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a new drill rig around here. The dark sky site for the Denver Astronomical Society is gone, all the drill rig lights ruined it.

DS

No wants to build new refineries for oil that doesn’t exist and won’t be pumped out of the ground. You can’t refine what you don’t have.

Instead, refineries are being permanently shut down on the east coast and in Europe that depend totally on the world export market, since that market has shrunk by over 10%, and the US is desperately propping up its market with biofuels and shifting end uses like chemicals and home heating to natural gas.

Anyone without oil addiction blinders and a basic sense of economics understands what is going on.

The foolish notions that futures prices for delivery next year affect current spot prices are ridiculous.

Oil prices are set by the price refiners think they can pay and still make money selling refined products, not by speculators or producers. When refiners make the wrong offer, they go out of business. E.g. see what is happening to Sunoco. When refiners sell refined products for too high a price, demand collapses. When producers demand too much, no one buys their oil e.g. see the collapse in oil consumption post 1979 and currently.

DS