Reduce, Reuse and Rental Could Solve a Growing Solid Waste Problem
Nonprofit Reuse Minnesota has issued a new report on the statewide impacts of reusing what might otherwise wind up as waste. It’s called a “circular economy.”
Tag Archives: economics
ADUs Are Working Great — Just Not for the Twin Cities
Overheated coastal housing markets have seen remarkable ADU booms, while the Twin Cities has had negligible ADU development.
National Links: Sprawl vs Density in Colorado
This week’s compilation of “National Links”: the financial impact of cars, why widening highways doesn’t work and a controversial climate project in Copenhagen.
National Links: Declining Aging Economies
Links from The Overhead Wire to news from around the country. This week: why so many office workers are still staying at home, a political standoff over an Omaha bike lane and a discussion of America’s future climate havens.
How Housing Development Creates a Collective-Action Problem, in St. Paul and Beyond
Here’s one reason we have a housing shortage: New development creates diffuse benefits, but has concentrated costs. Local control over land use ensures we’ll undercount the benefits.
Why Minneapolis needs a Land Value Tax
This image shows a mostly undeveloped parking lot, occupying a full block of prime real estate in the heart of downtown Minneapolis. Why does this lot remain underdeveloped? The owner of the land could increase their income drastically if they developed the land to its fullest potential. Additionally, the city as a whole would gain […]
National Links: The Donut Model
Every day at The Overhead Wire we collect news about cities and send the links to our email list. At the end of the week we take some of the most popular stories and post them to Greater Greater Washington, a group blog similar to streets.mn that focuses on urban issues in the D.C. region. […]
Arguments Against Minneapolis’s Draft Comprehensive Plan, Addressed (Part III)
Phew! The public comment phase of the exhaustively publicized, discussed, and public-feedback-solicited 2040 Minneapolis Comprehensive Plan is over. I don’t know about you, but I am incredibly aware of the existence of this planning process and of my opportunities and methods for learning what the draft plan contains, and for offering my feedback! However, the planning […]
A Modern City for People Would Devote Less Space to Cars
I have been struck lately by how much space privately-owned automobiles take up. It’s the Starbucks on Marshall that got me thinking about it, and just the sheer percentage of that lot that is devoted to moving and storing cars. All space devoted to use for cars is people-unfriendly. Car space increases distances between destinations. […]
Shut Up and Take My Money…Before I Board
Rather than spending decades coordinating on farecards and behind the scenes payment technologies, transit agencies, and other organizations with their own currency, should join the rest of the world and just use standard modern payment technologies. Not special edition MasterCards. Not new consortiums of region-only standardized fare cards. Use soon-to-be run of the mill NFC-enabled smart phones, cash, and credit […]