My friend Scott Beyer, who calls himself a market urbanist, has his heart in the right place but often has his facts wrong. He thinks he believes in free markets, but he loves transit so much that he can’t accept that, in a true free market, most transit would disappear.
New York City subway construction, entirely paid for by taxpayers, in 1901.
His latest article asks if America will “get private subways (again)?” The article makes it clear that he believes the New York City subways were built with private money. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Instead, the city built the subways with tax dollars and then gave/leased them to private operators. I say “gave/leased” because the private operators were supposed to pay the city fees that were supposed to eventually cover the cost of construction. But the private operators successfully worded the contracts so that they only had to pay fees if they earned certain levels of profits. In the two decades after the contracts were signed, the operators collected more than $500 million in revenues but paid the city only $2.1 million. The city ended up losing nearly half a billion dollars on subway construction.
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Some subways in Boston and Philadelphia were built with private funds, but Beyer never mentions these. He appears to be unaware that the vast majority of subways in the United States were taxpayer subsidized from the day they were built.
In a true free market, subways would never be built in the United States today. I doubt they would be built anywhere; private subways exist in Hong Kong and Tokyo, but those cities are extraordinarily dense due to land-use restrictions that have prevented people from living at the densities they would prefer (and that would make subways non-viable). That can hardly be considered a true free market.
To the extent that mass transit makes sense, it would use buses, not subways, light rail, or other infrastructure-heavy systems. The idea that Americans would voluntarily live in high enough densities to support a subway is wishful thinking on Beyer’s part. Unfortunately, too much of what is called market urbanism falls into that category.
Old Myth. John Stossel was an idiot in his video about public/private. But he was right, private sector does well (Not in bed with government)……
They paid a private contractor to build and operate the railroads and kept fares at a nickel. When they wanted to raise the fares, New Yorkers raised shit fits and govt agreed to absorb a semi-autonomous agency into a full blown government organization and still run it as a “Business”….
Market urbanism doesn’t work, because infrastructure demands fall on taxpayer after they conceive it. Low market urbanism of “Jacobs” style greenwich village neighborhoods cant be built either, Some by zoning/land laws. But mostly because no one wants to live in a place without access to open space.
Architecture is the philosophy that the “Built form” is beautiful, even in the absence of natural elements. Visit Rome, it’s very pretty, what you don’t see are trees, not many line the street/sidewalks. Most of the plants are containerized or small pots. The mentality that views man and nature apart and irreconcilable in terms of land-use is rooted in our culture from the shock of industrial urbanism in the 19th century that made super clustered ghettos that Jane Jacobs would later call “Neighborhoods” They were neighborhoods when they cleared the riffraff and turned tenements into actual homes and aparts. With the advent of the City beautiful movement and labor rights and welfare of Children spearheaded some progress but mostly built grandiose public buildings and little used parks. Central park New York at 2.5 miles long and 0.5 miles wide would have been more successful if it were smaller (2 x 0.5) Most of the park is desert (not in the arid sense) but it requires substantial maintenance, is frequently hosted by cities less savory people, and is virtually blair witch-esque to visit at night.
But having no faith in urbanism, and having no training in civic design, the environmentalists could imagine only nature as a solution: trees, grass, etc, (forgetting for a moment that even parks are man-made artifacts). Giant fields of grass for skyscrapers is sore attempt to give people sense of nature they never frequent because they’re being observed by towers. Not a university, we don’t need a quad. But the desire to integrate with some nature stems from a severe problem in urban design. Good urban design generates forms for public enjoyment even without views of nature. The garden in civic design reflects human specific scale…..Which is why the gardens of backyards and fronts took such excellent cues.
Visit Charlotte, New Orleans or Savannah if you need example….
https://images.ctfassets.net/twizyp0t114t/6eZxldf8higwPkUqAPCraG/8e37867356020177487ff9982ed9ed7c/01_Garden_District__1_.jpg?w=800&q=80
If we’re talking about the human habitat, let’s adopt the vocabulary of urban design
1: the PARK (1- Pocket parks which occupy 0.01-1 acres often nestledd between buildings or private or near streets, roads, The small parks in the city between 1-50 acres in size and the BIG parks between 50-1000 acres for wildlife, naturalistic and more active outdoor activities like camping, boating, horses)
2: The square (Often occupied by civil buildings, but a huge public open space whether it be trees or planters; and the biggest accoutrements is the use of public domain and free assembly and petition)
3: The Plaza. the smallest and least vegetated. Often built by companies/building owners to satiate zoning laws that benefit specific building demands, but society benefits from an open realm.
Most people who self identify as some ideology rarely understand what it really means.
Most urbanists that self identify as “libertarians” or “free market advocates” are no different. They’re like the annoying drunk at the bar who won’t shut up about their love for country western while blowing $40 in the jukebox playing a couple hours of shallow Bro-Country.