Tag: Cities

“Order without Design” by Alain Bertaud

Highly recommend the book, “Order without Design: How Markets Shape Cities” by Alain Bertaud.

Especially recommended for professional urban planners, armchair urban planners, people looking to better understand how their cities work, and nerds looking for healthy doses of graphs, statistics, and analysis to inform their municipal commentary and priorities.

For me, this book fed my confirmation bias that it’s all about mobility, and also challenged and changed my views on sprawl and density constraints. It also introduced me to some next-level ways of thinking about housing affordability and cities as labor markets.

Here are some of my notes, comments and favorite excerpts. I put direct excerpts in quotations, and delineate my personal commentary using AF Comment. Everything else is pretty much me picking out takeaways, summarizing and paraphrasing to varying degrees.

For more on these topics, be sure to listen to interviews with author Alain Bertaud on Conversations with Tyler (Tyler Cowen) and EconTalk (Russ Roberts).

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A week in Israel

My first trip to the land of milk and honey – it was like the first chapter of a great book.

The country, the geography, the people, the politics, the history, the religion, the culture, the conflict – Israel feels like a big, compelling, complex story.

Here are some of my notes and photos from an inspiring, eye-opening trip.

Also, if you go, bring a hat, sunglasses and sunscreen.

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Four days in Berlin

Berlin seems grungy, quirky and cool, with an edge. Much different vibe than Munich or other big European cities I’ve been to.

I’m most impressed by how elegantly Berlin weaves in elements from its complex past throughout the city. Berlin tells its stories through big memorials and museums that you’ll see called out in every tourist book, and also subtle plaques and landmarks, sometimes posted on nondescript light posts, on nondescript streets. Interesting stuff that catches your eye as your walking by, and makes you stop and read and think for a moment. This is a difficult balancing act, and from what I’ve seen the city does a great job walking the tight rope.

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