The World Cup is underway.

England in Roo-ins: The cup means large gatherings of fans and sweet commercials (even the older ones).

Infrastructure: Jarrett Walker takes a look at some of the transit improvements for South Africa, building off the notion that large scale events like the World Cup can provide a kind of focus for infrastructure investments and other benefits that will last well after the conclusion of the games.  Infrastructurist looks at the stadiums.

Last week’s screening on the Mall of PBS’ documentary of Daniel Burnham focused a great deal on his role in the creation of the White City at the 1893 Columbian Exposition – another special event that focused a great deal of infrastructure investment – highlights two issues: the temporary and often fleeting nature of these kinds of events, as well as the ability to focus investments in one area.  Chicago focused on a park, Vancouver’s investments in one region – South Africa’s investments are spread across an entire country.

Ryan Avent’s post on infrastructure investments in mature cities versus growing ones also gets at the comparison between Chicago in 1893 and Vancouver in 2010.

Representative Space: Mammoth takes a look at soccer as a representation of urban space – a diagram of the strategies for using space.  Very interesting.

Framing the Issue: Cap’n Transit disagrees with the idea of framing bus operating improvements in New York as a ‘surface subway.’  This is an important tension – selling a project to various stakeholders is vitally important if you ever want to actually get something done, but overselling the benefits of some projects can dangerous.

Home Ownership and NIMBYism: Ryan Avent dissects a recent paper from the Federal Reserve on home ownership and ‘investment’ in the community, both literally and figuratively.

It’s clearly right that homeowners take an active interest in local policy in an effort to protect and enhance local services and the value of their homes. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that homeowners are generating societal benefits…

It’s also not clear that homeowners are necessarily maximizing the value of their properties. Homeownership, as I’ve mentioned before, is an undiversified, highly-leveraged, immobile, illiquid financial bet. Having made such a bet, homeowners become very risk averse. We can imagine situations in which new developments are likely to benefit local homeowners and increase the value of their properties, but have benefits uncertain enough that there is a small but real probability of a negative effect on local property values. Highly risk-averse homeowners may opt to oppose the project, despite the good chance that they’d benefit from it.

Balancing individual and collective interests is one of the key tensions in any urban environment.  That tension also illuminates the problems of pushing home ownership as the be-all and end-all for one’s living situation.

Politically Correct: Bike lanes?

Couch Criticism: Architecture critics take on forts made of couch cushions.