Blog
Agriculture
Can big cities become an agricultural hotbed?
Over 4 billion people have joined the global population in the last 50 years, putting stress on available farmland, water and fertilizer. At the same time, the capacity of the planet to absorb farm waste – toxic farm runoff contaminating aquifers and rivers – has stretched the limit. Nearly 8 ...
Blog
‘Housing First’ puts lofty goals above real-world results
Proponents of housing first claim that housing is a basic human right, and a permanent and stable home is the best platform from which to help people overcome the challenges that led to their homelessness, including the problems of mental illness and addiction. As a result of this premise, ...
Agriculture
Life Is Too Short To Drink Subsidized Wine
Can the quality of California wine taste better than it already does? Apparently there’s a way to grow grapes that will do just that. A farming experiment at Robert Hall Winery in Paso Robles has produced grapes that, the San Francisco Chronicle reports, are “noticeably tastier” than grapes from ...
Blog
Prop 29 Isn’t Kidney-ing Around
During the pandemic, suddenly everyone became armchair medical experts – much to the chagrin of actual epidemiologists. We soon learned the dangers of politicizing health issues. But on this year’s ballot, California voters will have to become armchair medical experts when they vote on Proposition 29, who will be ...
Blog
About Free Cities Center
Cities throughout the West face rising crime, soaring housing costs, a sprawling homelessness crisis and devastated downtown areas following two years of COVID restrictions and the aftermath of destructive protests. Policymakers typically address these and other urban problems in a piecemeal fashion. They fail to understand what makes great cities ...
Blog
Urban bike lanes no answer to climate change ‘code red’
But not in California, where the barriers to having a constructive debate about this issue are many. They start with the huge logical gap between the state’s goal to have “eligible” renewable power sources and zero-carbon resources supply 100 percent of California’s electricity retail sales and the electricity used by ...
Blog
Union power makes urban reform nearly impossible
It’s well known that private-sector unions imposed higher costs and competitive disadvantages on companies that remained in cities. In a 2010 Cato Journal article, Stephen J. K. Walters explained that unions sparked their transformation “from engines of prosperity into areas afflicted by economic stagnation, chronic poverty, and all the social ...
Blog
First thing we do, let’s retrain all the planners
As a group of rebels bantered about the possibilities of an England with a new king in William Shakespeare’s “Henry The VI,” Dick the Butcher suggests “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Though the (likely sarcastic) comment resonates with many, we need to keep lawyers around. ...
Blog
Want to save cities? Then revamp urban schools
Want to Save Cities? Then Revamp Urban Schools There are many reasons for the decline of America’s cities, but one of the key reasons why many families flee older urban areas is because of the poor quality of urban public schools. Research has shown, however, that one way to reverse ...
Blog
In Political Speech, “Universal” Means Anything But
Every few months, the argument to “universalize” some sector of the economy captures national attention – be it for universal health care, universal childcare, or universal student loan forgiveness. All the arguments have an all-too-often overlooked fatal flaw: they assume goods are not scarce. In economic terms, all goods have ...
Can big cities become an agricultural hotbed?
Over 4 billion people have joined the global population in the last 50 years, putting stress on available farmland, water and fertilizer. At the same time, the capacity of the planet to absorb farm waste – toxic farm runoff contaminating aquifers and rivers – has stretched the limit. Nearly 8 ...
‘Housing First’ puts lofty goals above real-world results
Proponents of housing first claim that housing is a basic human right, and a permanent and stable home is the best platform from which to help people overcome the challenges that led to their homelessness, including the problems of mental illness and addiction. As a result of this premise, ...
Life Is Too Short To Drink Subsidized Wine
Can the quality of California wine taste better than it already does? Apparently there’s a way to grow grapes that will do just that. A farming experiment at Robert Hall Winery in Paso Robles has produced grapes that, the San Francisco Chronicle reports, are “noticeably tastier” than grapes from ...
Prop 29 Isn’t Kidney-ing Around
During the pandemic, suddenly everyone became armchair medical experts – much to the chagrin of actual epidemiologists. We soon learned the dangers of politicizing health issues. But on this year’s ballot, California voters will have to become armchair medical experts when they vote on Proposition 29, who will be ...
About Free Cities Center
Cities throughout the West face rising crime, soaring housing costs, a sprawling homelessness crisis and devastated downtown areas following two years of COVID restrictions and the aftermath of destructive protests. Policymakers typically address these and other urban problems in a piecemeal fashion. They fail to understand what makes great cities ...
Urban bike lanes no answer to climate change ‘code red’
But not in California, where the barriers to having a constructive debate about this issue are many. They start with the huge logical gap between the state’s goal to have “eligible” renewable power sources and zero-carbon resources supply 100 percent of California’s electricity retail sales and the electricity used by ...
Union power makes urban reform nearly impossible
It’s well known that private-sector unions imposed higher costs and competitive disadvantages on companies that remained in cities. In a 2010 Cato Journal article, Stephen J. K. Walters explained that unions sparked their transformation “from engines of prosperity into areas afflicted by economic stagnation, chronic poverty, and all the social ...
First thing we do, let’s retrain all the planners
As a group of rebels bantered about the possibilities of an England with a new king in William Shakespeare’s “Henry The VI,” Dick the Butcher suggests “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Though the (likely sarcastic) comment resonates with many, we need to keep lawyers around. ...
Want to save cities? Then revamp urban schools
Want to Save Cities? Then Revamp Urban Schools There are many reasons for the decline of America’s cities, but one of the key reasons why many families flee older urban areas is because of the poor quality of urban public schools. Research has shown, however, that one way to reverse ...
In Political Speech, “Universal” Means Anything But
Every few months, the argument to “universalize” some sector of the economy captures national attention – be it for universal health care, universal childcare, or universal student loan forgiveness. All the arguments have an all-too-often overlooked fatal flaw: they assume goods are not scarce. In economic terms, all goods have ...
