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Gen Z Moving Out of Cities

By | | Regional planning
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Remember the young people who supposedly loved cities and rejected the suburbs? It turns out they are the ones who have been fleeing the cities since the beginning of the pandemic. According to a recent analysis of census data, while the number of people in large cities declined by 0.9 percent since the pandemic began, the number of children under 5 — an indicator of young families — fell by more than 6 percent.

Americans have long preferred to raise children in the suburbs, and Gen Z turns out to be no exception. Photo by Cade Martin.

The notion that families with children prefer suburbs to inner cities will be a surprise only to urban planners who insisted that the suburbs are passé and that no one wanted to live in them anymore. Yet this narrative had become an established part of media reports about census data for the past couple of decades. Continue reading →

Have a Safe and Happy Holiday

By | | Housekeeping
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This Fourth of July is a four-day weekend for many and a record 50 million Americans are expected to travel to celebrate, including more than 43 million by auto. Please keep in mind the latest highway accident data and drive carefully to wherever you are going.

Once you arrive, remember: only you can prevent forest fires, which means avoiding fireworks in dry areas. Fireworks start over 19,000 fires a year including a 47,000-acre fire in Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge in 2017. The Forest Service urges people to use red, white, and blue silly string instead of fireworks, though even that is controversial.

With these cautions in mind, I hope you have a great holiday.

“The City That Jerks”

By | | News commentary
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Portland used to call itself “the city that works,” and I pointed out in a paper 16 years ago that, not only was it not working, it was especially ironic that it borrowed that claim from Chicago, another dysfunctional city. But if Portland wasn’t working in 2007, it is anti-working today, that is, actively working to alienate as many people and businesses as possible.

The latest example is Kevin Howard, who has been a Portland property developer for 40 years. The last property in the city that he owned was worth $800,000 a few years ago, but he was forced to sell it for little more than half that due to repeated invasions by homeless people and the city’s failure to do anything about it. Continue reading →

Transit’s Insatiable Appetite

By | | Transportation
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A few weeks ago, the Antiplanner reported that transit advocates were holding up rush hour traffic in San Francisco in order to blackmail the legislature into giving billions of dollars to transit systems that few people are riding anymore in order to prevent a fiscal cliff. I also noted that the blackmail worked as the state gave transit $2 billion including $1.1 billion for BART.

Is there a fiscal cliff ahead? Photo by Cary Lee.

Fiscal cliff averted! Except state senator Scott Weiner wants to “temporarily” raise Bay Area bridge tolls by $1.50 (from the current $7) for five years in order to provide more subsidies to transit. The increase will only be needed for five years, Weiner says, because by then he hopes Bay Area voters will have passed another tax increase to support transit systems they are no longer using. Continue reading →

Three Questions about EVs

By | | Transportation
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Judging from the headlines, the electric vehicle market is booming. Tesla is now the second-highest selling auto in California. General Motors, Ford, VW, and other companies claim to have set targets to largely transition from petroleum-powered vehicles in a few years. Each week, it seems, new models are being introduced, including everything from subcompacts to giant SUVs and pickups.

Will electric vehicles free us or tie us down?

Still, the closer I look the more questions I have. In particular, are auto manufacturers (other than Tesla) really serious about making EVs? Will electric vehicles ever be more than a niche product? And are they really a cost-effective way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions? Continue reading →

Interstate 95 and Induced Demand

By | | Transportation
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Kudos to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation for constructing a temporary replacement for a collapsed overpass in just 12 days, something that many predicted would take months. The replacement is just six lanes wide rather than the eight on the original overpass, but that leaves room for the department to construct a permanent replacement.

Some people are drawing the wrong lessons from the response to the highway collapse, however. According to Joe Cortright, the fact that there was no “carmageddon” during the 12 days the highway was closed proves that we don’t need highways at all. According to what Cortright calls the “science of ‘induced demand,'” building new roads simply leads to more driving and, conversely, closing roads leads to “traffic evaporation.” Continue reading →

If It’s “Livable,” You Can’t Afford It

By | | Housing
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North America’s most livable cities are also among the least affordable. At least, that’s my conclusion from the Economist‘s 2023 Livability Index. According to this index, Vancouver BC, which Wendell Cox ranks as the least-affordable housing market in North America, is also the continent’s most livable city.

Click image to download a copy of this report.

Other cities that the Economist ranks high on the livability list include Boston, Honolulu, Miami, Montreal, Portland, Toronto, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, all of which are rated unaffordable (median home prices are at least five times median household incomes) by Cox. The only city that is truly affordable and, according to the Economist, livable is Pittsburgh, and it’s so livable that its population has been shrinking for 70 years. Admittedly, the Economist also counts Atlanta, Calgary, and Minneapolis as livable, regions that Cox says are marginally affordable (home prices 4 to 5 times incomes). Continue reading →

A Home for Orphan Roads

By | | Transportation
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North Carolina is one of a handful of states — others include Alaska, Delaware, Virginia, and West Virginia — where counties don’t have their own road departments. This means most roads outside of cities are either owned by the states or are private. However, some roads don’t have any clear owners and are effectively abandoned, leading them to be called orphan roads.

Click image to download a 1.1-MB PDF of this report.

This becomes a problem when people buy a home not realizing that the road that the home is on is orphaned. Eventually, the road wears out and homeowners face thousands of dollars of maintenance costs. They then typically demand that the state take over maintenance, which would force other taxpayers to subsidize the homeowners. North Carolina’s John Locke Foundation asked the Antiplanner to take a look at this issue. Continue reading →

Transit Not Reinventing Itself

By | | Transportation
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Transit “systems are asking their local governments for bailouts as federal pandemic relief runs dry,” says the New York Times, “but they are also racing to reinvent themselves.” No, they are not.

Source: the Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine.

The examples of “reinvention” the Times gives mostly involve eliminating fares. But if the problem is that reduced ridership has impacted agency revenues, eliminating fares won’t restore those revenues. That’s not reinvention; it’s merely stepping up the subsidies and the need for even more bailouts. Continue reading →