Back in January Strong Towns ran a great piece by Nathaniel Hood called "This isn't an annexation - it's a bailout." It's a short story about a town in Minnesota that's about to annex a small 1960's subdivision that somehow remained in incorporated territory for many years. Basically this subdivision enjoyed low county tax rates for years and now that its infrastructure is shot, it's finally interested in joining up with the adjacent city in order to enjoy some services. Hood correctly characterizes this as a bailout, and I agree … [Read more...]
Archives for March 2016
Why Protestantism Is an Inherently Fragile Faith
Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor’s book A Secular Age is a landmark study of the process of secularization in the West from the late Middle Ages to the present day. Taylor focuses on the process by which we went from a world in the year 1500 in which it was impossible not to believe in God to today’s world in which unbelief is one valid choice among many. Taylor's work has profound implications ranging from the future of urbanism to the failure of the West to comprehend Islamic terrorism. I didn't know anything about Taylor when I … [Read more...]
In Praise of Plain Old Bus Service
My recent post on counting the long term costs of building rail transit got a lot of hits - and as expected a lot of pushback. There are a lot of people out there that are simply committed to the idea of rail transit, no matter how unwarranted a particular line or system might be. I find it interesting that the place with the most people applying serious skepticism to transit projects seems to be New York - the place with the biggest slam dunk of a case for it of any city. Lots of people, for example, have critiqued the proposed … [Read more...]
Opera’s Missing Audience Development Gene Threatens Its Very Survival
I am an opera fan. I say that with some trepidation. Liking opera is a bit like being a railfan. No matter how much you think you're into it, there's always someone else who is at least ten times nuttier about it than you. Nevertheless, I see a decent number of operas. But it's not impossible that large scale opera performance in the United States will go extinct before I die . Opera is a deeply troubled enterprise. Its financial model is broken as it struggles with Baumol's cost disease, among other problems. It has artistic … [Read more...]
What I Saw and Heard at the Antifascist Protest Against Trump
“Unless we defeat capitalism in the United States, humanity will not survive” Somebody on Twitter put out a request for on-scene reporting from the antifa organized protest against Donald Trump. The protest started at Columbus Circle near my apartment, so I decided to check it out. The plan was to march to Trump Tower on 5th Ave. I stayed for the Columbus Circle rally, but left before the march when my phone ran out of battery. I had actually live streamed video of over an hour of the rally, including all the speakers, using the … [Read more...]
Why You Should Think Twice Before Building a Rail Transit System
The Washington Metro system was shut down completely for a day this week to allow crews to inspect all of the power cables in the system. They found 26 cables and connectors in need of immediate repair. This is just the latest in a series of safety problems and breakdowns that have plagued the system. Metro has a large unfunded maintenance liability. This doesn't surprise us because we expect American transit systems to have a backlog. The difference is that unlike NYC, Chicago, Boston, etc., which have systems a century old, the … [Read more...]