Category Archives: Follow up

Some commenters on yesterday’s post want to pretend that the Antiplanner “cherry picked” three data series to show regions with a housing bubble and three more to show regions without a bubble. What rubbish.

My 2006 report on housing is based on data for 385 housing markets. Complete data are in the spreadsheet that I prepared for the report. You can use this spreadsheet to make your own charts like the ones in yesterday’s post for up to 6 metro areas at a time.

Continue reading →

As the Antiplanner pointed out on Tuesday, the increase in mass transit ridership accounts for only a tiny fraction of the decline in driving. What else are people doing to cope with high fuel prices? Please take a moment and respond to this unscientific poll. Don’t worry about being precise; just make estimates.

1. Do you think you are driving less this year than last year? If “no,” skip to question 7.

Continue reading →

By the way, some readers will remember that the Antiplanner had a bet with loyal opponent DanS about whether Oregon voters would repeal measure 37. Under the terms of the bet, “Any mere modification of the law, such as an amendment that allows some landowners to make claims but not others (such as individuals vs. corporations) or allows some claims but not others (such as allowing people to subdivide their land in three or four parcels but not scores of parcels) does not qualify as a ‘repeal.’

Measure 49 allows landowners who made claims under measure 37 to subdivide their property into three parcels, and may allow some to subdivide into up to ten parcels. So technically (since it doesn’t look like any further action will be taken to weaken measure 37), the Antiplanner has won the bet.

Continue reading →

Certain political terms, such as communist, Nazi, and even socialist, have become politically incorrect in the sense that they have been so successfully demonized that calling someone one of these terms is about equal to using the “n-word” or other derogatory ethnic terms. On the Internet, for example, if someone compares you with Nazis, you can declare yourself the winner of whatever debate you are in.

It is time for the progressive philosophy to join this list of politically unacceptable beliefs. At the moment, many people view “progressive” in a positive way that is not in keeping with its history or the beliefs of many of its current practitioners.

As the Antiplanner noted yesterday, it is ironic that the cities that have promoted policies that make housing unaffordable and push low-income people out like to call themselves progressive. This is only ironic because progressives love to pretend they care about minorities and low-income people. History, however, shows otherwise.

Continue reading →

This morning, the Seattle Times published the Antiplanner’s op ed about rail transit, energy, and greenhouse gases. But where did they get that deer-caught-in-the-headlights photo?

The Oregonian published an abbreviated version of the same op ed (san photo) last week.

Continue reading →

I had a difficult time finding wireless in Australia and even more in New Zealand. I found a place that has wireless but won’t let me use FTP to upload photos. I am sorry some of the photos in recent posts were not working, but without FTP it is hard to diagnose the problem.

In any case, Hugh Jardonn was nice enough to ask me to post some photos of my trip to the Zig Zag Railway, so I am doing so using Flickr. The trip was pretty inspirational if you are a railfan, as a small group of people have done a wonderful job restoring dozens of pieces of historic rail equipment along with (so far) more than 7 kilometers of track.

In the late 1960s, most Australian states had converted steam locomotives to Diesel and electrics, and some railfans in New South Wales decided to restore some steam locomotives and operate them for tourists. They looked at a couple of dozen possible locations and picked the Zig Zag, a place in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney where the rails once switched back and forth to gain elevation.

Before 1910, trains from Sydney would cross this “number one” stone viaduct going down a 2.5% grade, then stop just beyond the cut in the right center of the photo. Then they would back down the numbers two and three stone viaducts seen in the center of the photo, then reverse again and continue on to Lithgow on the line barely visible on the right. Today, the bottom line is still the mainline of the railway, while the top two lines are used by the tourist railway.

Continue reading →

A couple of weeks ago, the Cato Institute held a forum for the ultimate antiplanning book. The forum featured the Antiplanner along with two faithful allies, Robert Nelson (of the University of Maryland) and Ronald Utt (of the the Heritage Foundation).

The travel buy viagra for women expenses and stays of employees as well as trainers were liabilities that had to be taken care of in order to purchase medications online. The signs are cipla viagra runny nasal area moist. However, if you have become addicted to opioids then now is levitra vardenafil the right time for you to do so. Evidence report: Behavior and physical treatments for Tension-type and Cervicogenic Headache.”5 The report took a comprehensive look at all of the previous studies on buying tadalafil headaches.
Cato recorded the forum and has a link to the video (in Real Player format) on its web site. But the link was broken when Cato revamped its web site last weekend. Although they may have fixed it by now, I am including the link here for those who cannot attend the San Jose conference this weekend. In addition to a moderately high-speed connection, you will need Real Player, which can be downloaded for free, to make it work.