Alain Bertaud (previously) is an urban planner who never met an urban economist until almost a decade after graduating from planning school. The economist opened his eyes: not only did urban economics often teach exactly the opposite of what planning schools taught, the economists based their conclusions on data, models, and real world experience, while the planners based their ideas on intuition and the general beliefs of previous generations of planners.
Bertaud’s new book, Order without Design, reflects a lifetime of growing skepticism about urban planning dogma. Planners, says Bertaud, based their ideas on rules of thumb that were developed by people who often know nothing about the people they are regulating or planning for. Continue reading
