Tag Archives: economics

The rent is too damn high

I just finished a nice, quick read of Matt Yglesias’ new e-book The Rent is too Damn High. Following in the same vein as Ryan Avent’s The Gated City, Yglesias documents the perverse economic impacts of development regulations and restrictions on urban areas. Though not as well sourced and without the in-depth discussion of Avent’s e-book, Yglesias nonetheless offers an accessible and understandable narrative to understanding the same array of urban economic issues.

Yglesias’ self summary is available at his blog:

It’s about the high cost of housing in America’s coastal metropolises and downtowns everywhere, but more broadly it’s about the crucial role that dense urban development and barriers to its creation matter in a service economy. If you’ve ever read me on housing and wondered “why does this guy think this is so important” or read me on manufacturing and thought “yeah, but what’s his answer” then you will find the answers herein. Andrew Chesley has been reading his copy and liked this line:

Lots of people buy RVs, but nobody “invests” in them. And what’s a house but a giant RV with no wheels?

As I said before, one of my key goals with this book was to write something that would not only be cheap to buy (just $3.99!) but also short. That means I didn’t pad it out with a lot of to-be-sures and efforts to guess what objections people will have. Better, I thought, to release a detailed-but-not-tedious version of my ideas into the world and then see what people see. So if anyone reads it and has questions, objections, thoughts, ideas, etc. please do email me about them or send links to your own blog where you’ve written about it. I’d love to continue the discussion and follow whatever points people think are interesting or flat-out wrong or in need of elaboration.

In the spirit of that discussion, I have a few thoughts.

First, a video interlude for the book’s namesake.

Perhaps the most interesting part to me is Matt’s claim in the book that the final chapter of any public policy book (the chapter that actually gets at potential solutions) is often the most disappointing. I won’t hold that against this e-book, since the educational component about the issue (as opposed to, say, healthcare or climate change) often isn’t even regarded as a problem.

That said, who is the audience for this kind of material? Convincing the general public, one development project and one upzoning at a time isn’t a sustainable solution. Likewise, too much of the NIMBY opposition discourse is of the shotgun, everything including the kitchen sink approach: throw out all possible objections and see what works. That kind of approach isn’t likely to buy into a reasoned argument.

Tyler Cowen assumes most of America won’t pay attention to Matt’s point – but maybe they don’t have to. Perhaps with some procedural modifications (see thoughts here and here) you could make progress, and in that case the audience in need of convincing would be elected officials – either by convincing current officials or by electing new ones who understand the issue. Good news: as Matt points out, Mitt Romney was all over this back in 2006.

Josh Barro at Forbes looks at Chicago and wonders how that city manages to keep prices in line with construction costs:

Yet Chicago has a planning process that looks, at first, like it ought to be a nightmare. The city is divided into 50 wards, each of which elects an Alderman to the City Council. In practice, the Alderman has enormous control over what developments get approved within his ward. Yet, despite these fiefdoms, projects tend to get approved.

This is partly because Chicago also liberally uses Tax Increment Financing districts, which now cover huge swathes of the city. When a TIF district is created, the amount of property tax revenue that the district sends to the city is frozen for 23 years. Increases in property tax receipts are instead directed into a special fund that can only be used for projects within the TIF district boundaries—and new developments tend to mean significant increases in property tax collections. When you create a TIF, you create an incentive for residents and their Aldermen to approve new development, as that means more money for local goodies.

I’d expect nothing less from the City that Works. However, it’s not as if Chicago’s system (or that of Houston) produces quality results all the time. Chicago still has plenty of those subtle barriers to development that often produce unintended consequences, even if the overall price levels are reasonable. Also, Chicago isn’t seeing the same kind of intense demand as other coastal cities are, perhaps confounding the city’s apparent success in keeping costs reasonable.

David Schleicher, in an interview with Mark Bergen at Forbes (Part 1, Part 2) discusses some potential legislative solutions.

It’s great to see these issues front and center in the discourse, even if only in this small corner of the internet. I’d highly recommend Matt’s e-book for a quick, concise summary of the basic issues of over-regulation and the benefits of density and cities with a little more freedom to operate.

[EDIT: 3/9, 7:52 am – Yglesias responds here]

The gated Washington region

The Gated City in action: Today’s Washington Post on the inadequacy of the region’s housing supply in meeting demand. In short, Ryan Avent called it. The region is producing jobs, people want to move here, yet it hasn’t been able to produce enough housing to meet that demand. From the Post article:

“If businesses find they can’t have their workers live near where they can work, they’re going to go somewhere else. And the workers themselves might also go somewhere else,” said Lisa A. Sturtevant, an assistant professor at George Mason’s school of public policy, who co-authored the study with Stephen S. Fuller, director of the university’s Center for Regional Analysis.

Their research showed that the Washington area, defined by 22 counties and cities, is expected to add 1.05 million jobs through 2030. More than a third of those jobs will be in professional and technical sectors, but significant growth also is expected in administrative, service and health-related jobs that often pay lower wages. If those numbers hold true, that boom will require as many as 731,457 additional units to house workers in the jurisdictions where they work, the study found.

That means the region would need to produce about 38,000 new housing units per year, “an annual pace of construction never before seen in the region and below what local jurisdictions have accounted for in their comprehensive plans,” the study concludes. Data show that over the past 19 years, the region has averaged 28,600 building permits a year; last year, about 15,000 building permits were issued in the region.

In addition, much of the new housing needs to be multi-family units (to make efficient use of available land) and affordable rentals (to put it within reach of younger workers and those with lower salaries), George Mason’s researchers argue.

For more on Fuller and his work, see Lydia DePillis’s April City Paper profile.

I must, however, take issue with the Post‘s framing of the issue. From the second paragraph in the article:

With that growth comes a vexing problem: How do you house those new workers in ways that are both affordable and don’t worsen the soul-crushing commutes that already plague the region’s residents?

The problem here isn’t vexing at all. Nor, frankly, is the solution. The solution is rather obvious: we need to grow up instead of out. We need to add density. We need infill development around existing infrastructure assets. Admittedly, implementing that solution is certainly more vexing than simply stating it aloud, but let’s not let the challenge of implementation obscure the diagnosis of the root problem.

Norman Foster’s aerotropolis

Image via Foster+Partners

Norman Foster is working on a concept for a massive new airport complex for London along the Thames Estuary. I first saw this (via ArchDaily) thanks to a shared Google Reader item (alas, no more) from Neil Flanagan. Yesterday, Planetizen points to an Atlantic piece on the subject, featuring new renderings from Foster + Partners posted on DesignBoom:

understanding the transportation challenges facing britain, london-based practice foster + partners, have collaborated with consulting firms halcrow (international) and volterra (UK) for a self-funded study producing the ‘thames hub vision’, a detailed report that uses scale and strategic cross-sector thinking to design an integrated infrastructure network. the masterplan proposes to replace the existing thames barrier with a new crossing that will extend london’s protection from floods into the 22nd century. it will mitigate the capital from rising storm levels, free up vital land for development and harness tidal power to generate carbon-free energy.

building on existing transportation lines to the north, east and west of london ‘the hub’ will avoid future congestion into the city. an orbital rail system with a four-track, high-speed passenger and freight route will link london’s current radial lines, with a future high-speed rail line to the midlands and the north, the thames estuary ports, high speed 1, and european networks. by minimizing the developmental impact the environmental strategy aims to provides new wildlife habitats landscaped within the spine.

This is more or less the Aerotropolis in a tangible proposal. John Kasarda and Greg Lindsay’s book spends a great deal of time on Heathrow; the inability of various cities (Chicago, Los Angeles) to build new and needed airports for various reasons; and cities that have done so through planning or via accident (Dulles, Dallas, Denver). Heathrow’s capacity constraints serve as a drag on not just London’s economy, but as a drag on key link in the global transport network.

Having read the book but never gotten around to a review, I thought I’d take this moment to highlight some of the more interesting thoughts I’ve come across regarding the importance of aviation as well as the aerotropolis concept.

Recently, Aaron Renn penned a somewhat pessimistic review of the somewhat totalitarian implications of planned aerotropoli:

A few things jumped at me out of the book. One of them is the close linkage between the aerotropolis and its boosters with authoritarianism (and by extension, similarly for globalization and its boosters). The second is that, despite vast sums of money and authoritarian rule, I didn’t come away with a sense of anyplace in the world that had fully pulled off Kasarda’s vision. Indeed, there are as many or more failures than successes. And even those successes are far from perfect ones.

Renn does highlight the fundamental issue, regardless of Kasarda’s plans and predictions: that aviation is a tremendous force in globalization and the flows of commerce. (For more on the tension between singular vision and democracy, see Alon Levy’s post on consensus and vision) Back in March, mammoth made the case that the aerotropolis is merely the symbol of globalization. Air travel might be the sexy mode, but the real work of global trade should probably be symbolized by the intermodal cargo container and all of its associated infrastructure.

It seems to me that the “aerotropolis” (particularly on the more restricted Kasarda definition) is more a symbol of globalization than it is the ultimate instantiation of globalization. Sea shipping is (and was for centuries before the invention of flight) the dominant mode of global transport. To get an indication of the difference in magnitude between sea and air shipping, just look at Shanghai, the world’s busiest cargo port by tonnage, and Memphis, the world’s busiest airport by tonnage: Memphis sees about three million tons a year; Shanghai sees around five hundred million tons a year. This is not a statistical aberration.

(As an aside, Matt Yglesias makes the point that even in the age of global trade, geography and proximity still matter.) Renn also points out that theaerotropolis is ultimately a measure of connections and networks – and the idea of the aerotropolis as a proscription isn’t nearly as strong as it is in description:

The lesson I draw is that while good air connectivity is critical for a city in the global economy – indeed, I almost draw my threshold population for what constitutes a minimum viable city in the globalized world in terms of whether or not it is big enough to support a major airport – the airport is only one ingredient needed for success, not the entire recipe. Cities that pin their hopes too heavily on airport led transformation are bound to be disappointed. And even if you go in with the best of intentions trying to do airport development right, you are far from guaranteed to have success.

Renn’s critique is well put, though I feel it ends up talking past some of the broader themes that Lindsay and Kasarda highlight in favor of deconstructing Kasarada’s specific, proscriptive vision for the future of air travel. In many ways, their main thesis isn’t anything new, just another example of transportation infrastructure shaping human development.

Also disputing the tone of telling is what we want, Kazys Varnelis disputes the book’s tag line, “the way you’ll live next.”

The answer is that the Aerotropolis is already here and it’s really not all that exciting. I went on two international flights in the last two weeks. Newark International Airport is about a half hour drive from the apartment I rent while La Guardia is about a half hour cab ride from Columbia. Do I really need to be closer? Could I really be closer, like the inhabitants of Kowloon Walled City who had jets pass by a hundred meters overhead?

No. I am far enough away that I don’t hear the noise from the planes too often, don’t viscerally experience the pollution, and don’t feel something is going to crash on my head.

Today, the City Paper linked to some great photos from the National Archives from the 1970s, including one of the District as a parking lot during a 1974 transit strike. Varnelis’ words echo the last image in the set of a DC-10 on approach into Logan Airport in Boston in 1973:

For more on Aerotropolis (the book), see this excellent interview with co-author Greg Lindsey at BLDGBLOG.

Innovative re-use along the low road

Screencap from Bundled, Buried, and Behind Closed Doors

Assorted (and tangentially related) links:

1. Stephen Smith also digs into Eric Colbert (see my previous post here):

I’m not sure I agree with her parenthetical about DC’s “historic fabric” being “so strong already” – in fact, I’m hard-pressed to think of a newer city on the Northeast Corridor than Washington – but she’s definitely right that that’s what Washingtonians, even the not-so-native ones, think of their city. Of-right development – that is, building within the zoning code in a way that does not trigger a subjective review – is on the wane everywhere in America, but in DC it’s even rarer, and therefore personal relationships like the ones Eric Colbert has (“an ANC 2B commissioner, who had worked with Colbert on previous projects, introduced him with affection”) are even more important than usual when compared to good design.

A few points. A) I’m not sure why Stephen associates the strength of a city’s fabric with age – DC’s fabric has the advantage of being largely intact. B) Stephen more explicitly states the same thesis – that Colbert’s architecture is ‘boring,’ and boring is, by association, bad design. I would disagree that fabric is boring – on the contrary, fabric is essential. C) It’s a mistake to conflate the countable and objective measures of development (square footage, height, density, etc) with more subjective measures like ‘good design.’ Stephen conflates two key elements here – development by right, and design by right. The regulatory structures and processes that govern both are quite different.

2. Cities are all about context. Atlantic Cities discusses a review of San Francisco by John King, from iconic buildings to more mundane (boring?) elements of the urban fabric.

3. Mammoth links to another Atlantic piece, discussing “Low Road” buildings and their importance in urban economics, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

The startup lore says that many companies were founded in garages, attics, and warehouses. Once word got around, companies started copying the formula. They stuck stylized cube farms into faux warehouses and figured that would work. The coolness of these operations would help them look cool and retain employees. Keep scaling that idea up and you get Apple’s ultrahip mega headquarters, which is part spaceship and part Apple Store.

But as Stewart Brand argued in his pathbreaking essay, “‘Nobody Cares What You Do in There’: The Low Road,” it’s not hip buildings that foster creativity but crappy ones.

“Low Road buildings are low-visibility, low-rent, no-style, high-turnover,” Brand wrote. “Most of the world’s work is done in Low Road buildings, and even in rich societies the most inventive creativity, especially youthful creativity, will be found in Low Road buildings taking full advantage of the license to try things.”

Being on the low road isn’t exactly the same as being a part of the fabric – the price point and the prominence don’t always correlate – but the concept is somewhat similar. These spaces are easy to adapt and reuse. Not just easy, but cheap.

4. Where Stewart Brand discusses the space of innovation, Ryan Avent has another (follow-up) piece on the geography of innovation:

I think that the authors have basically gotten the state of innovation right: we are approaching a critical point at which impressive progress in information technology becomes explosive progress. And I think that the authors are right that the extent to which we are able to take advantage of these technological developments will hinge on how successful America’s tinkerers are at experimenting with new business models and turning them into new businesses. But I also think that there is a critical geographic component to that process of experimentation and entrepreneurship and, as I wrote in my book, I think we are systematically constraining the operation of that component.

High housing costs constitute a substantial regulatory tax burden on residence in many high productivity areas. These are the places where the tinkerers are having their ongoing innovative conversation. But if the tinkerers are driven away, the conversation loses depth and breadth, and we lose many of the combinations that might go on to be the next big company — the next big employer. That, to me, is a very worrying idea.

5. When considering both the versatility of space as well as the institutional and infrastructural momentum (as well as touching on the importance of information technology), Mammoth also links to a short documentary of the infrastructure of the internet: Bundled, Buried, and Behind Closed Doors:

Quick links on rising rents, density, and housing supply

CC image from Eric Wilfong

Some quick notes:

1. DC rents continue to rise:

While the vacancy rate for the Metro area is indeed low, it is most pronounced among Class A buildings in the District where just 1.6 percent of apartments are vacant. Class A rents in the city in the third quarter averaged $2,582/month, up from $2,448/month in September 2010. For Class B buildings, the situation for renters in the city looked a little better; the vacancy rate sat at 2.2 percent (up from 1.8 percent last year), but rents also increased to $1,886/month from $1,793/month in September 2010.

From the report:

“…while all submarkets are chronically low [in the area], there is notable vacancy variance among District submarkets. The Upper Northwest submarket posted the lowest stabilized vacancy at 0.5%, while Columbia Heights/Shaw posted a stabilized vacancy of 2.4%.”

2. I’d say there’s some strong demand in this market. Clearly, room for more development, yes? Yet Housing Complex notes that some developers are concerned about their new projects all hitting the market at the same time.

“There is just a ton of supply coming,” he said. “In certain markets, there will be spot oversupply.” Which is developer-speak for holy shit guys slow down so my building will still sell.

3. Payton Chung with some important synthesis of recent growth and affordability discussions, noting the key distinctions between micro and macro levels:

– as Rob points out, housing is a bundle of goods whose utilities vary for different audiences
– housing construction can induce demand, particularly by adding amenities to a neighborhood
– housing construction can also remove amenities from a neighborhood, like a low-rise scale, thus changing other intangibles included in that bundle of goods
– construction costs don’t increase linearly; rather, costs jump at certain inflection points, like between low- and mid-rise
– housing and real estate in general are imperfect markets, since land is not a replicable commodity
– the substantial lag time for housing construction, even in less regulated markets, almost guarantees that supply will miss demand peaks

Pro-active planning remains the best and most time-honored way of pre-empting NIMBYs. Get the neighborhood to buy-in to neighborhood change early on, and then they won’t be surprised and upset when it happens.

I’ve often cited Chris Bradford’s short post on filtering as a good summary of one of the dynamics at play, but there’s no one thing you can point to for a full explanation.

As for Payton’s last point about the best offense against NIMBYs being a good defense (or maybe it’s the other way around), I hope to write more about that soon as a part of a more complete response to Ryan Avent’s The Gated City.

eBooks and Cities

Ryan Avent’s recently published Kindle Single on urban economics entitled “The Gated City” finally enticed me to venture into eBooks. I’ve tested out friends’ Kindles, but never felt the urge to spend my cash on one – I still like the feel of a real book and don’t care to carry yet another device around, particularly one with the limited application of the Kindle. Likewise, I’m not yet willing to drop the money for an iPad, so my device stalemate continues.

Presented with something I want to read and a product that’s only available in one electronic medium or another, I took the plunge. Likewise, knowing that other electronic-only publications I’d be interested in are coming down the pike only hastens the point. Not wanting to hurriedly invest in new hardware, I downloaded the Kindle reader for my computer, as well as the Kindle app for my Droid smartphone. I already do quite a bit of reading on the go via my phone, mostly through Google Reader and various mobile news sites (anytime the Washington Post wishes to adopt a better mobile site format, it would be welcome).

While I’m not wild about reading long-form works on my laptop any more than I already do, I’ve found the Android reader to work quite nicely. The added advantage of not being entirely reliant on a wireless signal while underground on the Metro is an added bonus. I already carry my phone with me all the time, thus there is no need to haul along another device.

Converting to e-books isn’t completely without remorse. Alon Levy noted (in the comments) his refusal to buy an e-book, noting “they are to browsing at a bookstore what driving is to walking on a commercial street.” Given recent discussions in DC about the loss of third places (that just so happen to sell hardcopy books – not without a bit of irony, given B&N’s foray into e-readers as well), this isn’t a change to take lightly. At the same time, I’m sure Ryan Avent would note that rapidly increasing rents for your local bookstore are a more worthy culprit – as well as the fact that the innovation that takes place in cities can often be disruptive.

Density, productivity, and housing prices

Ryan Avent recently spoke at the Kauffman Foundation‘s conference for economic bloggers. His short presentation touches on a number of economic issues as they relate to urban economies and their role in our national economy.

The presentation tackles Tyler Cowen’s Great Stagnation thesis. Avent specifically looks at the benefits of density on productivity and innovation, and how the dispersal of the American population has had a disparate impact on American productivity.

The implications for cities are clear – the dense areas (owing to the benefits of agglomeration and economies of scale) are extremely productive, but they’ve not been the areas seeing growth in recent decades. Instead, the less-dense places in the sun belt have grown. Avent attributes this to the sun belt’s ability to expand supply and keep housing costs low (citing Ed Glaeser). The implication is that the low cost of living is attracting people to areas that are less productive than the dense but hard-to-expand coastal cities.

Weekend Reading

CC image from sabeth718

There’s a whole host of good stuff out there this weekend, covering the economy, smart growth, transit, high speed rail, and more:

Smart growth is nothing to fear: Roger Lewis aims to quiet the fears of Washington Post readers:

In fact, as new long-range plans are implemented in the coming decades, your property’s value will probably go up, your way of life and neighborhood character will be enhanced, and traffic congestion will not worsen. Indeed, it may ease. Also remember that such plans primarily serve future generations.

Optimism is justified. Stable, low-density residential neighborhoods and subdivisions will remain untouched. Transportation network plans do not depend on routing future traffic through subdivisions and local residential streets, many of which are loops and cul-de-sacs. And redeveloped areas actually will provide new, desirable conveniences for residents able to walk or bike to buy a quart of milk or sip coffee in a cafe.

Daniel Gross puts that into a larger context: Complete with quotes from Richard Florida, Mr. Gross looks to optimistic visions of the future and the chance to re-shape our economy, using the pending economic rebound to re-shape things – putting those kinds of smart growth plans into action:

So what will our new economy look like once the smoke finally clears? There will likely be fewer McMansions with four-car garages and more well-insulated homes, fewer Hummers and more Chevy Volts, less proprietary trading and more productivity-enhancing software, less debt and more capital, more exported goods and less imported energy. Most significantly, there will be new commercial infrastructures and industrial ecosystems that incubate and propel growth—much as the Internet did in the 1990s.

Not everyone is so optimistic: Reihan Salam at The Daily Beast isn’t nearly as optimistic about our economic prospects, despite the good intentions and aspirations of folks like Roger Lewis.

But one could just as easily argue that we’ve been furiously spending taxpayer dollars propping up the McMansion-and-Hummer economy. To protect homeowners, we’ve launched an extraordinary series of interventions designed to buttress housing prices, an approach that effectively transfers wealth from those who rent to those who own. Collapsing housing prices could prove a boon for less-affluent households or cautious investors who were reluctant to buy at the top of the market. That can’t help unless we accept that housing prices can and should collapse, even if that hurts key constituencies in the short term. And the same goes for efforts to keep the domestic automotive industry on life support.

So, are we in a moment of change or not? The point about renters and owners is well taken, it reminds me of plenty of discussion around tax day about the perils of the mortgage interest deduction.

Beyond these big, national-level policy questions, there’s plenty of room to debate the local impact. Housing Complex notes that DC has lots of jobs (relatively) and high rents, circling back to the notion that the ability to change things won’t be uniform across the nation. Places like DC are positioned well to make the transformation – provided the Federal framework enables these kinds of changes.

On that note, Aaron Renn looks at a potential city-friendly federal policy framework, emphasizing talent, innovation, and connection – looking at policy areas of transportation, housing, the environment, and immigration. Perhaps the key takeaway is the requirement of flexibility – many of today’s problems stem from federal policies that are too rigid to be of much use in urban environments.

Density discussions: Density is good for cities. It’s also often misunderstood and feared – see Roger Lewis’ calming of fears regarding smart growth. A few posts on the subject:

Yonah Freemark questions whether streetcar suburb densities are enough to get real urbanism and transit use.
Aaron Renn asks if density is overrated for smaller cities, as they can still compete without it, taking advantage of highways and cars that work well at lower densities.
Cap’n Transit criticizes both thoughts, emphasizing the bigger picture about why we want to encourage urbanism and transit use in the first place – arguing that Renn’s rationalization isn’t helpful in the long run.

Miscellany:

Parking nightmares – requirements, history, and the path (or lot location) not taken.
Ed Glaeser – Cities demonstrate “the power of agglomeration — the enormous value that human beings place on being near one another.”
Guerrilla subway art in New York demands better etiquette from riders. Reminds me of Metro’s anti-rapture campaign.
Interesting thoughts on the added value of HSR to local land uses around stations.
NPR looks at songs for the urban cyclist.

Economists for cities, density

CC image from urbanfeel on flickr

Ed Glaeser, professor of economics at Harvard, chimes in on cities, density, and their economic value on the Economix blog:

But now humanity is marked more by concentration than by spread. In 2007, one-half of the world’s population became officially urban. One-third of Americans inhabit just 16 large metropolitan areas, which collectively use only a tiny fraction of the country’s land mass…

Understanding the appeal of proximity — the economic advantages of agglomeration — helps make sense of the past and future of cities. If people still clustered together primarily to reduce the costs of moving manufactured goods, then cities would become increasingly irrelevant as transportation costs continue to decline.

If cities serve, as I believe, primarily, to connect people and enable them to learn from one another, than an increasingly information-intensive economy will only make urban density more valuable.

Glaeser highlights several conclusions – including a key one that density increases productivity. Ryan Avent has harped on this before. Any way you slice it, the end idea is that cities are the intellectual and economic hubs of our country.

Improvements in transportation and communication costs made it cost-effective to manufacture in low-cost areas, which led to the decline of older industrial cities like Detroit. But those same changes also increased the returns to innovation, and the free flow of ideas in cities make them natural hubs of innovation. Since the death of distance increased the scope for new innovation, idea-intensive innovating cities were helped by the same forces that hurt goods-producing cities.

Humanity is a social species and our greatest gift is our ability to learn from one another. Cities thrive by enabling that learning, and they have become only more important as knowledge has become more valuable. Understanding what makes cities work is more important than ever.

In order to avoid alienating groups on political grounds, it’s worth noting that we’re talking about cities, broadly defined. Just as the focus on urban, walkable places is an urban design distinction rather than a political one, the benefits of urban agglomerations are regional. Design matters, of course – I’d be curious to see if an economist could measure if economic benefits of agglomeration can be attributed to any other characteristics other than density.

City Block

a work in progress…