I recently heard talks by Ryan Avent, author of “The Gated City”; and Matt Yglesias, author of “The Rent Is Too Damn High.” Both agreed that the inefficiency of urban land use has increased greatly in the last few decades, at least in the biggest US cities like New York. Most of the infrastructure that makes such cities great was made during the era of
Instead of bidding on outcome packages, I think you'll get a better solution if people bid price-per-unit, or something so that you can optimize via e.g. the simplex method, rather than choose winning bids.
I'm not enough of an economic thinker to easily articulate my reasons for believing this, but in this scenario, it seems to me that optimal solutions (in the sense of a maximal-sum set of compatible bids) are particularly likely to be hugely suboptimal in a separate and arguably more important sense (that of maximizing any reasonable measure of aggregate human utility).
This is mitigated by the fact that the winning bid set can be used to fund city services. That said, my gut feel is that the proposed approach, unless carefully constrained, would put the utility of the many at the mercy of the dollars of a few to a much greater degree than is typical with most current approaches to city planning.
That said, I do have a sense that city planning is fertile ground for the application of optimization technologies.
Probably global warming and the melting of Greenland. That will add 7 meters to sea level which puts much of NYC under water. The cheapest thing to so would be to abandon it and build something new elsewhere.
Fascinating. Apparently this problem is NP-complete, which makes it even more fascinating. Apparently there are heuristics available.
If cities were more autonomous and competing with each other (instead of countries or states), do you think it would be likely for some city to come up with this kind of solution?
"For example, when each area limits density to keep out poor folks, such as via lot size and height rules, the city fails to provide a place for needed poor workers."
I don't believe that example. Cities have centralized zoning.
Political machines may explain why infrastructure is built more slowly, but how does it address the inability to increase density? There's no city-wide coordination needed for a particular building. Maybe the developer has to bribe too many people now, but why are they dispersed?
Part of the problem is uncertain property rights: lots of people might be granted veto rights by a court. Making the property rights explicit is probably more important than mechanisms for aggregating preferences in their deployment. This also addresses much corruption.
But most of the problems seem to me to come from people not wanting to admit their preferences, because they are unfashionable or contradict the rules of other levels of government. eg, people make complicated rules to keep out poor people, rather than just keeping them out, while the state may require that the city try to bring them in.
with my libertarian hat on methinks the elimination of zoning would result in greater productivity than more efficient coordination between zoning powers.
Of course now that i've had that thought I must seek out the strongest possible critique of it. Looks like I have a long read ahead of me. http://www.law.fsu.edu/jour...
That's a rather ominous way to end your post. How can I sleep tonight not knowing what big disruption to my comfortable change-averse lifestyle Robin Hanson was alluding to?
Instead of bidding on outcome packages, I think you'll get a better solution if people bid price-per-unit, or something so that you can optimize via e.g. the simplex method, rather than choose winning bids.
In response to your despair, perhaps this near project might be worth some of your time?
City 2.0:http://www.tedprize.org/ann...
I'm not enough of an economic thinker to easily articulate my reasons for believing this, but in this scenario, it seems to me that optimal solutions (in the sense of a maximal-sum set of compatible bids) are particularly likely to be hugely suboptimal in a separate and arguably more important sense (that of maximizing any reasonable measure of aggregate human utility).
This is mitigated by the fact that the winning bid set can be used to fund city services. That said, my gut feel is that the proposed approach, unless carefully constrained, would put the utility of the many at the mercy of the dollars of a few to a much greater degree than is typical with most current approaches to city planning.
That said, I do have a sense that city planning is fertile ground for the application of optimization technologies.
Robin has already stated what he believes the next big change to be.
daedalus2u, relevant books would be "Climatopolis" and "The World in 2050".
Hear hear, you have a commendable attitude towards your opinions. :)
Probably global warming and the melting of Greenland. That will add 7 meters to sea level which puts much of NYC under water. The cheapest thing to so would be to abandon it and build something new elsewhere.
Or better yet do away with zoning altogether!
Fascinating. Apparently this problem is NP-complete, which makes it even more fascinating. Apparently there are heuristics available.
If cities were more autonomous and competing with each other (instead of countries or states), do you think it would be likely for some city to come up with this kind of solution?
"For example, when each area limits density to keep out poor folks, such as via lot size and height rules, the city fails to provide a place for needed poor workers."
I don't believe that example. Cities have centralized zoning.
Political machines may explain why infrastructure is built more slowly, but how does it address the inability to increase density? There's no city-wide coordination needed for a particular building. Maybe the developer has to bribe too many people now, but why are they dispersed?
Part of the problem is uncertain property rights: lots of people might be granted veto rights by a court. Making the property rights explicit is probably more important than mechanisms for aggregating preferences in their deployment. This also addresses much corruption.
But most of the problems seem to me to come from people not wanting to admit their preferences, because they are unfashionable or contradict the rules of other levels of government. eg, people make complicated rules to keep out poor people, rather than just keeping them out, while the state may require that the city try to bring them in.
with my libertarian hat on methinks the elimination of zoning would result in greater productivity than more efficient coordination between zoning powers.
Of course now that i've had that thought I must seek out the strongest possible critique of it. Looks like I have a long read ahead of me. http://www.law.fsu.edu/jour...
That's a rather ominous way to end your post. How can I sleep tonight not knowing what big disruption to my comfortable change-averse lifestyle Robin Hanson was alluding to?