Free Cities
Blog
Read latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
Portland overrules bureaucrats and streamlines permitting
Back in March 2021, city auditors issued a blunt assessment of the city’s permitting system. “Getting a building permit in Portland can be a frustratingly slow process,” the auditors concluded, noting the city had for years missed its own timeliness goals. “Delays can affect the economy and motivate property owners ...
Blog
Sorry, Urbanists, But Bicycles Will Never Save the Planet
Sorry, Urbanists, But Bicycles Will Never Save The Planet Steven Greenhut | December 4, 2024 SACRAMENTO – After my recent column chiding urbanists for their visceral dislike of suburbia and cars, I’ve been bemused by posts from a subset of their movement: hard-core bicyclists. Lots of people, myself included, enjoy an occasional ...
Blog
Read latest from Free Cities Center
With motivation, even California can clean up its cities
Why can’t it be like this all the time? The efforts were criticized because so much of San Francisco has fallen into a state of disrepair, with pervasive homelessness, drug abuse, petty crime and even human feces (so much so that a map was created to document the location of poop) ...
Blog
Read latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
The state’s housing shortages have consequences
Due to a combination of population growth and a slow response by the home-building industry, California had by 2020 fallen an estimated 3.5-million units short of what was needed to bring supply into balance with demand. Since that time, the gap has narrowed by half, with the state logging a net population loss ...
Free Cities
Watch latest video from PRI's Free Cities Center
Watch: Tour Sacramento’s New “Safe Stay Communities” to Help the Homeless
Blog
Read latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
Tejon Ranch’s CEQA battle offers warning for new Solano city
To cope with an ongoing and severe housing shortage, California’s Legislature has passed laws that override local zoning laws to make it easier for developers to construct high-density “infill” projects within existing cities. What California’s policymakers have not done, however, is encourage the development of new cities on raw land. One such ...
Free Cities
Scott Beyer – Latin America’s Urban Experience
Our guest this week is Scott Beyer, founder of the Market Urbanist, a website that reports and researches innovative free-market policy solutions to the myriad of problems many cities are facing. Scott is the author of PRI’s new mini book: Latin America’s Urban Experience: How Markets Help Developing Countries Cope ...
Blog
Latin America Should Upgrade Rather Than Demolish ‘Favelas’
Latin America Should Upgrade Rather Than Demolish ‘Favelas’ By Scott Beyer | November 16, 2023 Some developing countries are making the same urban-renewal mistakes made by the United States in the post-war era. Sensible market-oriented policies can transform slums into safe and decent neighborhoods rather than simply displacing poor people. ...
Blog
Read latest from Free Cities Center
Can district elections provide better city representation?
I was born in Detroit in 1955 and grew up in the nearby suburb of Wayne. So I had a front-row seat for Motown’s decline in the 1960s. One reason I’ve heard over the decades is Detroit from 1918 until 2013 elected council members at large. That was contrasted to ...
Book
NEW BOOK RELEASE
Latin America’s Experience Shows How Markets Can Help Urban America Overcome Government-Created Problems
SACRAMENTO – Despite its socialist political traditions, Latin America offers some free market lessons for the West Coast’s urban centers on housing, transportation, government services and startup cities, finds a new book released today by the Free Cities Center at the nonpartisan, free-market think tank, the Pacific Research Institute. Click ...
Read latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
Portland overrules bureaucrats and streamlines permitting
Back in March 2021, city auditors issued a blunt assessment of the city’s permitting system. “Getting a building permit in Portland can be a frustratingly slow process,” the auditors concluded, noting the city had for years missed its own timeliness goals. “Delays can affect the economy and motivate property owners ...
Sorry, Urbanists, But Bicycles Will Never Save the Planet
Sorry, Urbanists, But Bicycles Will Never Save The Planet Steven Greenhut | December 4, 2024 SACRAMENTO – After my recent column chiding urbanists for their visceral dislike of suburbia and cars, I’ve been bemused by posts from a subset of their movement: hard-core bicyclists. Lots of people, myself included, enjoy an occasional ...
Read latest from Free Cities Center
With motivation, even California can clean up its cities
Why can’t it be like this all the time? The efforts were criticized because so much of San Francisco has fallen into a state of disrepair, with pervasive homelessness, drug abuse, petty crime and even human feces (so much so that a map was created to document the location of poop) ...
Read latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
The state’s housing shortages have consequences
Due to a combination of population growth and a slow response by the home-building industry, California had by 2020 fallen an estimated 3.5-million units short of what was needed to bring supply into balance with demand. Since that time, the gap has narrowed by half, with the state logging a net population loss ...
Watch latest video from PRI's Free Cities Center
Watch: Tour Sacramento’s New “Safe Stay Communities” to Help the Homeless
Read latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
Tejon Ranch’s CEQA battle offers warning for new Solano city
To cope with an ongoing and severe housing shortage, California’s Legislature has passed laws that override local zoning laws to make it easier for developers to construct high-density “infill” projects within existing cities. What California’s policymakers have not done, however, is encourage the development of new cities on raw land. One such ...
Scott Beyer – Latin America’s Urban Experience
Our guest this week is Scott Beyer, founder of the Market Urbanist, a website that reports and researches innovative free-market policy solutions to the myriad of problems many cities are facing. Scott is the author of PRI’s new mini book: Latin America’s Urban Experience: How Markets Help Developing Countries Cope ...
Latin America Should Upgrade Rather Than Demolish ‘Favelas’
Latin America Should Upgrade Rather Than Demolish ‘Favelas’ By Scott Beyer | November 16, 2023 Some developing countries are making the same urban-renewal mistakes made by the United States in the post-war era. Sensible market-oriented policies can transform slums into safe and decent neighborhoods rather than simply displacing poor people. ...
Read latest from Free Cities Center
Can district elections provide better city representation?
I was born in Detroit in 1955 and grew up in the nearby suburb of Wayne. So I had a front-row seat for Motown’s decline in the 1960s. One reason I’ve heard over the decades is Detroit from 1918 until 2013 elected council members at large. That was contrasted to ...
NEW BOOK RELEASE
Latin America’s Experience Shows How Markets Can Help Urban America Overcome Government-Created Problems
SACRAMENTO – Despite its socialist political traditions, Latin America offers some free market lessons for the West Coast’s urban centers on housing, transportation, government services and startup cities, finds a new book released today by the Free Cities Center at the nonpartisan, free-market think tank, the Pacific Research Institute. Click ...
