Menace of Privilege

I’m not one to pimp other blogs, but I discovered another Georgist leaning blog (or should I say they discovered me, leading me to them) and the current top story is a winner.

I am always amazed how these “New Urbanist” movement people seem to forget the basics when it comes to city design and planning. They’ll talk all day long about fundamentals but utter the word “rent” and then all of a sudden its: “Well, the macro-indicators are blah blah, and the interest rates are blah blah, and …”. The next closest thing to astrology, I swear.

These are the same people who will say we should build these mass-transit white-elephants and then try and explain why they aren’t used. Just like Bill Batt says here:

http://thetyee.ca/Views/2006/06/21/WUF1/

(Wyn A)

“This prompted William Batt, a sustainable transportation expert from Albany, New York, to recall the ride he took on a fancy new elevated commuter railway in Chennai, India. "They put the rail where the politicians wanted it to go, not where people needed it. So at rush hour, it was empty." Batt also spent a lonely Sunday afternoon on Vancouver's Millennium SkyTrain Line. What shocked him most were the vast parking lots along the way, like that at Brentwood Mall. "Parking lots! That land is begging to be used."