The preliminary report forecasts that it will take $30 billion to $55 billion to complete. Experience suggests costs would likely be much higher. There are two principal problems. The first is that high-speed rail routinely costs much more than planned. The second is...
Wendell Cox joins Global News to discuss the advantages, or disadvantages to implementing a High Speed Train from Vancouver to Portland. (~10 minutes)
Many observers think California urban areas are more geographically expansive ("lower density" or to use the pejorative term, more "sprawling") then those elsewhere in the nation, especially the Northeast Corridor, which runs from the Washington DC metropolitan area...
Patrik Schumacher, managing partner of Zaha Hadid Architects, and consultant Wendell Cox are both controversial figures in the urbanist world. They joined Aaron M. Renn in conversation to talk about their beliefs and what it's like to challenge the urbanist...
In this essay, I explain that young people should come to university to be educated, and not to become credentialed; the public should support universities because universities educate young people, not because they produce credentialled workers. Why should a...
During the whole of recorded history, the empire has been the most constant and common form of political organization. A basic, self-evident feature of all empire-building has been the successful occupation of the lands of the local, Indigenous inhabitants by outside...
Senior Fellow Wendell Cox and Ronald Utt examine housing policies under consideration in the United States, focusing on the negative impact of ‘smart growth’.
Just how bad is the current economic downturn? It is frequently claimed that the crash of 2008 is the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. There is plenty of reason to accept this characterization, though we clearly are not suffering the widespread hardship of the Depression era.
But a bit of reality is in order. Transit has its place and it is an important place. But for most people and most trips, there is simply no way that transit can compete in travel time or convenience. Worst of all, its high costs make significant expansion unaffordable and thus out of the question and hopeless with respect to any material role in achieving whatever GHG emission reduction objective is finally adopted.
The 5th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey expands coverage to 265 markets in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Generally, Chinese urban planning policies have been a substantial contributor to the nation’s rising wealth. It is to be hoped that the advice of the western planners will continue to be respectfully listened to and largely ignored.
The financial collapse was not the long expected and inevitable collapse of a corrupt system. It rather can be attributed to two primary and very concentrated causes. Both causes could have been avoided with skillful regulation: one would have required more regulation, the other less. Finally, both causes were American, pure and simple.
People tend to adopt those products and practices that make their lives better. For those few (in the national context) who work in the largest downtown areas, transit makes their lives better. For those working elsewhere, cars do.
All of this leads to the bottom line. It is crucial that smart growth’s toxic land rationing policies be dismantled as quickly as possible. Otherwise, there could be further smart growth economic crises ahead, or, perhaps even worse, a further freezing of economic opportunity for future generations.
The mortgage meltdown is much more than an American affair. Real estate bubbles have developed in all major English speaking countries – US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Where prices will finally settle, no one knows. Some analysts soothe the market claiming that the bottom is near.