Today marks 50 years of my work in public policy analysis. I began in June 1972 as an intern for the Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group. By July, I had written a lengthy paper on how Portland should make transportation improvements to reduce air pollution. Since then, I’ve written somewhere around 200 more papers, several books, and numerous op-eds and articles on topics ranging from endangered species to high-speed rail in geographic areas ranging from Georgia to Tasmania.
I started writing the Antiplanner in January, 2007, and have since written more than 3,700 posts, including 150 policy briefs. That’s enough; it’s time for me to retire. This is difficult because I feel I still have some unfinished business.
The first half of my career was helping environmentalists protect natural resources from corporations that wanted government subsidies to do harm to the environment. After two decades, I left the environmental movement when they began supporting government subsidies to corporations to do harm to the environment.
The second half of my career was helping libertarian groups oppose urban plans that sought to densify cities and force people to live in ways they didn’t want to live. Now numerous libertarian groups are supporting planners’ efforts to densify cities, supposedly as a way of reducing regulation but only those regulations against density, not the regulations against the low-density housing that most Americans prefer.
The environmental movement changed when it was taken over by people for whom making government bigger was more important than protecting the environment. The libertarian groups changed when they were taken over by self-described “market urbanists” who think they believe in free markets but who have been taught that Density Is Good and so willingly turn a blind eye to land-use policies that force cities to become denser. When those policies lead to congestion, unaffordable housing, crime, and other problems, they just say the cities aren’t dense enough yet.
These turnabouts feel like nothing less than betrayals to me, yet I still managed to have an impact. I played a key role in persuading the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to reduce federal timber sales by 75 percent. I helped local public land activists save millions of acres of wilderness. I helped stop light-rail lines in San Antonio, St. Petersburg, Winnipeg, and several other cities. I played a key role in stopping the Florida high-speed rail project, which effectively killed the momentum for a nationwide high-speed rail program.
“Workaholic” is more than a portmanteau: I must really be addicted to work if I kept working for five months after Cato stopped paying me, and withdrawing from that addiction won’t be easy. I’ll still post transit, driving, housing, and other data updates here from time to time, just not on a daily basis. I’ll keep keep posting to Streamliner Memories, my other daily blog. I have another chapter or two to write for The Education of an Iconoclast. I have at least one more major report coming out soon. If someone wants me to study a particular issue or speak on a topic, I’ll consider it, but I won’t try to make a living out of it.
Whether you agree with me or not, please accept my gratitude for reading and commenting on this blog over the past 15 years. If you visit Oregon, or I come to your state, I hope we get a chance to meet in person. Until then, I am signing off, at least on daily blog posts.
Au avoir
I’ll miss you. It’s sad that you don’t have a young intern willing and able to carry on your important work.
I wish you many safe and satisfying bike rides.
I’ll miss my morning antiplanner but the battle will go on …
A final link from today’s WSJ.
Dreaded Commute to the City Is Keeping Offices Mostly Empty
https://on.wsj.com/3z4Kw64
We can buy more stuff but we can’t buy more time.
Enjoy your retirement a stone’s throw away from the Metolius in the shadow of Black Butte. You’ve more than earned it, and you’re in the perfect place from which you can watch the world implode. Maybe I’ll see you sometime at the Camp Sherman store, at Wizard Falls hatchery, up on Green Ridge, or at the headwaters (which are highly overrated if you ask me).
PlinySnodgrass,
The headwaters are a good place to take first-time visitors, but more stunning are the big springs located a quarter-mile south of Canyon Creek Campground.
Look for me cycling on the paved roads around Camp Sherman.
The Antiplanner
Before you retire should go on Richard Hanania’s podcast. He is an up an comming independent intellectual and very un orthodox. I’d also suggest doing a video with Bryan Caplan because he is writing a book on housing regulations right now.
I’m sorry to read this, but also happy for you. You deserve some more chill time. But it’s bittersweet indeed. You’re still one of the few voices challenging far too many policymakers at every level of government, and too many academics, who just don’t like automobiles and single-family houses. I remember Russell Baker writing something to the effect that, what does the average family want? A house, a car and enough income to put a nice piece of meat on the barbecue on the weekend. Now, the political left does not want ordinary people to have any of those things. Keep pitching, although not so often.
I’m very sorry that you are leaving. You wrote one of the best blogs on the internet, and I learned a great deal from you.
Good luck in your new endeavors, and thank you for what you have done for me.
is there another online out that proves transit info similar to yours?
Well keep this criticism alive.
We don’t really have to do anything. Just watch transit and central planning fail on its own
Thanks for all your excellent work over the last 50 years. We all appreciate your work and hope to still see occasional input from you even intermittently. We will all miss your daily blog. Have a good retirement, and thanks for your service for reason, the environment and justice.
Thanks for all your outstanding work to provide the facts about transportation and urban planning. Your output is prodigious and virtually always high quality. Much appreciated.
You’ve earned a nice retirement, doing whatever you want. Enjoy.
Antiplanner,
Longtime reader, first time commenter.
Thank you for the many years of interesting posts and policy briefs. The recent libertarian movement towards YIMBY has really been frustrating when none of the YIMBY groups support housing development outside of urban growth boundaries. Apparently NIMBY is still in vogue so long as the person lives on the edge of the UGB. Your work has made an impact and has forever changed my views on what the role of the planner is to society. I’m sorry I won’t have your blog to look forward to but understand the desire to move on. There were so many upcoming and current projects I was hoping to hear your comments on, not limited to:
-the Oregon Washington I-5 bridge and if they’re going to get their low-capacity train.
-the multi multi million dollar bike path being built through the Columbia River Gorge next to i84. The internet will not be the same without your posts.
Thanks again
What a shame, antiplanner. Thanks for your hard work over the years in helping America achieve a declining number of road deaths million miles traveled!
https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/early-estimate-2021-traffic-fatalities
https://data.oecd.org/chart/6IwT
Sad to hear it but change inevitably comes. At the same time I would not be as pessimistic about the long. A lot of us have listened and learned. Eventually the truth works its way out.