Sex and the City Economy

“Where there’s a will there’s a way.” she text me. But even when it comes to sex, as an urban economist I don’t respond well to binary options. “The longer the way, the lesser the will” I replied. Yes, I am that kind of geek.

I would like to talk about some market behaviors in the city that we usually disregard – sex and love. On these “markets” we are simultaneously both the service providers and the customers, no money is involved (yes… by all means, feel free to make your jokes here) and yet Supply and Demand of those are playing a role in the way our cities function.

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Seamless Mobility and The Missing Player or Who Hijacked My City

Our cities are not taking the lead. On the surface everyone talks about a smart city and a new generation of public transportation, but in practice most cities are dragged into this revolution rather than actually lead it.

Transportation companies do not represent the city’s residents. Uber for example considers (at best) the interests of its drivers and passengers. From its perspective, other public transports and pedestrians are considered as a nuisance or worse, as competition. It would have been easier for Uber if those two were not part of the public space.

These days, most of the cities that deal with smart city projects and new types of transportation do not initiate solutions. Most of them are simply following on proposed business solutions. Uber, Lyft, Bird and other companies spread their transportation networks in the city with minimal coordination or without any coordination at all. At present, no one stands to represent the pedestrians and the residents of the city in front of these transportation companies, resulting in the chaos we see today .

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Reverse writers block is still a block

… and here comes crisis #1. I knew this book is not gonna be easy. Thinking in Hebrew and writing in English is much more than reversing the text direction.

But I think the real block I have now is the opposite of writers block. it’s not that I don’t have anything to say, it’s that I have too much and I can’t figure out what comes first. I have realized now that I’m actually writing two books. one about Spatial Economics and the other about Urban Transportation. In my mind those are combined but here I find myself skipping back and forth.

so…

I need to choose and I prefer to talk more about Spatial Economics. I’ll just wrap the 4th article in the “Seamless Transportation” block and then restrict myself to the City Economics stuff.

Let’s see if this will be the end of crisis #1.
Ain’t No Mountain High Enough on the speakers is a good place to start.

Seamless Mobility and Passenger Experience or How Can Public Transportation Travel Look Like

If you had to plan the urban transport system from scratch today, would it look the way it does now? Probably not. The key to good public transportation is Seamless Mobility – a user experience so great that the passenger hardly noticed the vehicles he rides or the road. An experience tailored to the transportation solution I have suggested in the previous article.

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Seamless Mobility and Hierarchical Transportation or How can public transport improve in the near future

If you had to plan the urban transport system from scratch today, would it look the way it does now? probably not. Urban transportation planning suffers from a mental fixation and I invite you to take a step back with me and rethink about how it should be conducted. In my opinion, the IT systems we have today can lead to a new type of transport, one that is not defined by Nodes and Modes.

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