David Byrne, whose claim to expertise in urban economics is that he visited lots of cities as a member of a rock and roll band, has written a book about bicycling. To publicize it, he wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal about what makes a city livable.
I might find his opinions credible if they weren’t simply a rehash of New Urbanism. Tellingly, he commits the ultimate blunder of the neophyte would-be urban planner: he disses Los Angeles for not having “sufficient density.”
