City Observer has a nice weekly roundup with way more stuff than I could actually hope to read in a week. This example covers everything from car “demonization” to affordable housing to real estate capital gains.

I’ve been in the process of trying to form opinions on these issues for many years. On cars, I think they are demons. At least, private cars and all the waste and environmental and social hell they have unleased on the entire world. We should design cities and connections between them so we almost never need them. Then we can keep a few share cars and taxis around. On affordable housing, I don’t have the answers that have alluded everyone else forever, but in general I like focusing on the idea of supporting well-functioning markets that are able to set appropriate prices. When you distort prices with large subsidization schemes in a world of finite resources, you end up with distorted systems and unintended consequences. Better to find ways to remove hidden distortions, subsidies, and discrimination, constrain supply less, help people get around efficiently, and generally help them make an income and build assets so they can afford what housing costs. In the U.S., all the tax deductions and exceptions for homeowners and subsidization of inefficient low-density infrastructure are forms of distortion that maybe should be phased out. But please don’t take away my personal subsidies all at once, because I was counting on them when I made my last round of housing and financial decisions.