Laurence Aurbach's blog

This essay discusses the reasons for neighborhood ratings, which can be grouped into six broadly overlapping categories: communication, recognition, planning, marketing, research and investing.

This essay is the first attempt (to the best of my knowledge) to mount a comprehensive counterargument to intersection spacing standards on the grounds of crash safety. Comments and feedback are requested.

Redwood City's Free-Market Parking Meters
By Laurence Aurbach, 3 Apr 2007
http://pedshed.net/?p=105

At first glance the notion of free-market parking meters seems impossibly arcane. But as Donald Shoup pointed out in a recent NY Times editorial, "cruising for curb parking generates about 30 percent of the traffic in central business districts." Shoup studied Westwood Village, next to the UCLA campus, and found that drivers searching for curb parking created 950,000 excess vehicle miles of travel per year. That's equivalent to 38 trips around the earth, taking place in just one retail district in L.A.