Order Without Design: How Markets Shape Cities

by Alain Bertaud

Rating: 3.0 / 5 · Read · Finished 2019-07-16

It’s pretty long winded so I started skimming after the first two chapters.

Basic ideas:

Cities are primarily labor markets. People move there for jobs and companies move there for specialized workers.
Large cities / large labor markets are more productive. Fast face-to-face communication between specialists. Fast sharing of knowledge. Good for knowledge work, bad for space-hungry industry.
Mobility (cheap, fast commute) make for more efficient allocation of labor (each person can choose between more jobs, and each job can recruit from more people)
Land prices are signals that allocate land efficiently. Urban center can be reached by many workers –> land is valuable/expensive –> people build denser offices and apartments to consume less land.
Land is expensive in places where you can be very productive. Places where you can earn high salaries or hire skilled labor.
Urban planners should learn from economists: don’t regulate too much (e.g. don’t regulate maximum density)
Urban planners should regulate public goods like parks, roads. Ensure mobility with public transit, roads, bridges.
Welfare should generally be in the form of cash subsidies so people can make trade-offs themselves between location and quality of housing. (Don’t give the poor housing that’s far from jobs)

I’ve always been generally interested in cities, but I guess I wasn’t interested enough to slog through the entirety this textbook.