Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Hawaii's Demise Through the Eyes of the Economist

Homelessness in Hawaii is now international news. The local socialist mindset proposed to offer the homeless houses for free so we can get them off the streets so Honolulu doesn't look bad.  If this happens, the result is predictable: We will get even more of them.

In fact all this is old news: Homeless? Buy a One-Way Ticket to Hawaii -- Hawaii "is attracting homeless people from the mainland US by offering food, a bed, and health care for just $3 a day."

Obviously we are seeing the payoffs of decades of socialism:
  • Homelessness
  • Dilapidated infrastructure
  • Poorly performing public schools
  • Unfunded pensions
  • Quick approvals for million dollar apartments in Kakaako
  • Destruction of agriculture for cookie-cutter homes (Ho'opili)
 and of course,
  • A useless multi-billion dollar rail.
In another article, the political base of Pres. Obama, Illinois, is called America's Greece!

Next year they'll do a follow up: Is Hawaii America's Spain? Spain sunk billions in renewables, trains and overbuilt subdivisions. And they sunk their country.

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Smart Growth v. Suburbanization Score is 0-1

The Economist: A Suburban World explains that urban trends are driven more by the masses and less by the political, academic and "environmental" elites that love to dictate how the hoi polloi should live.

In short, despite rules, penalties and incentives Smart Growth lost to Suburbanization.  The following highlights from the article show why.
  • The planet as a whole is fast becoming suburban. In the emerging world almost every metropolis is growing in size faster than in population. Having bought their Gucci handbags and Volkswagens, the new Asian middle class is buying living space, resulting in colossal sprawl. 
  • Neither the car nor the motorway caused suburban sprawl, although they sped it up: cities were spreading before either came along. Nor was the flight to the suburbs caused by racism.  The real cause was mass affluence. As people grew richer, they demanded more privacy and space. Only a few could afford that in city centers; the rest moved out.
  • Romantic notions of sociable, high-density living—notions pushed, for the most part, by people who themselves occupy rather spacious residences—ignore the squalor and lack of privacy [that comes with high density].
  • The Western suburbs to which so many aspire are healthier than their detractors say. Even as urban centers revive, more Americans move from city center to suburb than go the other way.
  • Suburbanites tend to use more roads and consume more carbon than urbanites. But this damage can be alleviated by a carbon tax, by toll roads and by charging for parking. 
  • It is foolish to try to stop the spread of suburbs. Green belts [urban boundary policies], the most effective method for doing this, push up property prices and encourage long-distance commuting.
  • A wiser policy would be to plan for huge expansion. Acquire strips of land for roads and railways, and chunks for parks, before the city sprawls into them. This is not the dirigisme* of the new-town planner—that confident soul who believes he knows where people will want to live and work, and how they will get from one to the other. It is the realism needed to manage the inevitable.

(*) Dirigisme is an approach to economic development emphasizing the positive role of governmental intervention.

Monday, December 8, 2014

Made-in-China May be Costly for the Planet: The Case of Solar Panels

A team from Northwestern University lef by prof. Fengqi You performed a comprehensive evaluation called life cycle analysis on solar panels. LCA accounts for the energy used to make a product including the energy to mine raw materials, the fuel to transport the materials and products, the electricity to power the processing factory, and the cost and impacts of most resources required. This yields a more complete picture of costs environmental impacts for making and using solar panels.

The primary differences, the researchers found, are the less stringent enforcement of environmental regulations in China coupled with the country’s more coal-dependent power sector. “It takes a lot of energy to extract and process solar-grade silicon,” says co-author Seth Darling. “And in China, that energy tends to come from dirtier and less efficient energy sources than it does in Europe.”

How to Lose Market Share in Public Transit?

Simple: Invest in urban rail systems!

Evaluating Urban Rail