Commentary

The New Urbanism Versus the Market Process

is the title of an interesting paper I just came across by Randall Holcombe. He targets the most heavy handed aspects of New Urbanism. . . The paper offers two main themes: (1) the goals of the new urbanism are trying to work against market forces, so that regardless of their desirability, those goals are unlikely to be achieved; and (2) the methods advocated by the new urbanist movement are the same as those of Soviet-style central planning, and will lead to undesirable results for the same reasons that Soviet-style central planning did.