Photo: Flickr/lynx81

• The District of Columbia government has sometimes been commendably lenient in enforcing its arbitrary zoning restrictions. Except sometimes it decides to enforce the regulations for political reasons.
• Mailer Mailer debunks seven common myths about e-mail marketing. They point out, for instance, that sending lots of messages doesn’t necessarily lead to more unsubscribes.
• Reach Mail, meanwhile, offers advice on the best time of day to send marketing e-mails.
• Phew: demand continues strong for workers with MBAs. (Not so much for JDs, though.)
• Last but not least, Amazon.com is now selling more Kindle books than physical books.

More people would rather live here than anywhere “liveable.” Photo: Flickr/Martin Haesemeyer

• Why cities that people actually want to live in aren’t counted as “liveable” cities.
• Progressives are wrong, Burt Folsom explains: early Christians’ social compact was about private charity, not government redistribution.
• A neat infographic shows how long load times can drive website visitors away.
• Do sanctimonious op-eds about why atheists are better help atheists’ public image?
• How the minimum wage increases unemployment.
• Last but not least, Alex Tabarrok reports that the federal government is finally starting to sell off some of its assets. Uncle Sam owns fully 30 percent of the country’s land area.

Photo: Flickr/clydeorama

• Which Alex Semin will show up in the playoffs? I hope it’s this one.
• Hard work is passe, Hamilton Nolan writes. He suggests Americans not work one minute over eight hours a day. I can’t express how much I disagree.
• Ronald Bailey suggests that even the wisest bureaucrats might not be able to resist the human temptation to overreact to perceived risks.
• Brian Clark argues that concise writing and effective writing may be at odds.
• Is there really a wage gap between men and women?
• Last but not least, the District of Columbia is taking land from private landowners and giving it to a private developer who will use it for politically-approved purposes.

A Philadelphia parking lot. Photo: Flickr/Tim McFarlane

Like many urban problems, the decline of walkable, livable urban centers can be traced to government intervention. In Triumph of the City, Ed Glaeser argues that restrictive zoning regulations served only to distort markets, artificially limit density and make dense areas unaffordable.

In a new article for Cato Ubound, Donald Shoup argues that minimum parking requirements—which require developers to build a certain number of off-street parking spaces—have promoted auto-oriented urban design over denser, more walkable forms:

First, parking requirements prevent infill redevelopment on small lots, where fitting both a new building and the required parking is difficult and expensive. Second, parking requirements prevent new uses for many older buildings that lack the parking spaces required for the new uses…

Removing a parking requirement is not the same, however, as restricting parking or putting the city on a parking diet. Rather, parking requirements force-feed the city with parking spaces, and removing a parking requirement simply stops the force-feeding. Ceasing to require off-street parking gives businesses the freedom to provide as much or as little parking as they like. Cities can remove minimum requirements without imposing maximum limits, and opposition to parking limits should not be confused with support for minimum requirements. Minimum parking requirements may be our most disastrous experiment ever in social engineering, and ceasing to require off-street parking is not social engineering.

Over at Market Urbanism, Stephen Smith points to a study on how parking minimums distort builders’ decisions. The study, Smith says, finds “that at least half of all non-commercial properties have more parking than they would otherwise choose, and that the excess can oftentimes be quite large.”

Photo: Flickr/Jason Lawrence

• How a cab medallion system is counterproductive: it introduces artificial scarcity and distorts drivers’ incentives.
• Russ Roberts points out that Japan’s fuel shortages are no mystery and that the solution isn’t more regulation. Shortages are a result of price controls that keep a scare product artificially inexpensive.
• Some fancy CSS work by Josh Brewer yields an impressive typographic result.
• New York City’s parking “privatization” scheme is a bad idea that isn’t really privatization at all, Stephen Smith argues.
• Last but not least, Dan Mitchell rounds up the late-night hosts’ cracks about Libya. My favorite, from Conan: “It’s being reported that Moammar Gadhafi is surrounded by an elite core of female bodyguards. In a related story, Charlie Sheen invaded Libya.”

Smashing Magazine offers up examples of stylish e-commerce designs. Of course, the visual design of an e-commerce site is properly secondary to its main purpose: sales.

New findings suggests that young people are rejecting traditional suburbia. If it’s true, market demand will drive more urban housing; planners need not interfere (via Beyond DC).

And last but not least, why the iPad can’t fully replace newspapers:

Would the Dupont Circle CVS perform better with open windows instead of opaque displays? Photo: M.V. Jantzen

Window-shopping isn’t what it used to be, Philip Kennicott explains in the Washington Post. In an effort to maximize shelf space, all too many D.C. retailers like CVS block their windows, which reduces engagement with passers-by. I wonder: have retailers ever tested whether an engaging, inviting storefront might improve sales and offset revenues from lost shelving? (via GGW).

Ross Douthat says Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul is a prime example of why politicians must exercise prudence in addition to principle. Julian Sanchez makes a similar point: “Libertarians need to think harder about how our principles should degrade elegantly, how they can guide us through a fallen world where the live political options seldom afford a full escape from injustice.”

Michael Perkins argues that federal workers shouldn’t get effectively unlimited mass-transit benefits, and suggests instead a benefit that can be spent on any form of transportation. But why stop there? Why not eliminate the benefit altogether and increase salaries accordingly, allowing workers to spend their incomes as they see fit? Not only would this remove the distortions Perkins rightly decries, but it would free workers to choose their own spending priorities.

This Washington Post headline raised hopes, but only briefly, that President Obama had proposed spending cuts: “Democrats cautious on Obama’s spending-cut proposal.” Alas, it refers only to the President’s (important) assertion of budgetary authority—but not to any evidence that he plans any actual reduction in outlays.

And last but not least, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has released a clever ad poking fun at many prominent critics of her state’s immigration law:

Will Adam Smith’s principles prevail? Photo: Wikimedia

The new culture war “is not a fight over guns, gays or abortion,” Arthur Brooks argues, but a battle between free enterprise and statism. Supporters of free enterprise need to make a moral case for their system, he writes, to demonstrate that “earned success” is superior to dependence on government, and not simply hold that free enterprise delivers better material results.

Speaking of dependence on government, the New York Times claims that the insufficiency of one government subsidy, for child care, is driving families onto another government subsidy, welfare. However did people cope before government provided everything?

Renderings of the proposed Purple Line in Maryland show there’s no reason transit has to be ugly (link in PDF). While landscaping may add to the project’s cost, it’s worth remembering that aesthetics matter and that there’s a difference between lowering costs and cutting corners.

The Atlantic is running a special report on the changing American city. Every article is worth a read. Progressives have for too long dominated debates over urban policy; it behooves conservatives to engage this debate head-on and offer real solutions to problems facing cities.

And last but not least, Google has announced it will make its Pac-Man doodle permanently available.

Rand Paul. Photo: Gage Skidmore

Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul, son of Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), won the Republican primary on Tuesday in part by smoothing over differences with traditional conservatives, as David Weigel explains. Can this new, libertarian-leaning fusionism prevail in November?

Paul seems to have already gotten himself in some trouble for his  remarks about the Civil Rights Act. Mark Tapscott warns that the liberal-leaning media is likely to jump all over such rookie mistakes.

Cautioning that Paul’s particular brand of conservatism may not be viable outside Kentucky, Daniel Larison outlines the younger Paul’s political beliefs:

First of all, Paul is one of a very few Republican candidates in the country who is truly serious in his desire for fiscal responsibility. In his hostility to expansive government and reckless spending, he does not make exceptions for military spending, and he is appropriately skeptical of government power whether it comes in the form of military adventurism and empire-building or sweeping social legislation and bailouts.

Speaking of sweeping legislation, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget offers a budget simulator that challenges you to push the federal debt under 60 percent of GDP by 2018. It’s curious that many (though not all) of its fixes amount to fiddling around the edges, where more substantial reforms, like tax simplification or paring back of whole spending programs, may be more appropriate. Special challenge: win the game without imposing onerous new taxes!

Photo: citta-vita

Cities like New York and Washington are undergoing something of a baby boom as families increasingly settle in urban areas instead of the suburbs. This demographic development is causing new sorts of problems—like the relative unfriendliness of some city services to children—and conservatives need to be ready with real policy solutions for these young families.

It turns out Obamacare’s alleged Medicare savings don’t really add up to much. Too bad the AP tells us after the legislation passes.

Mother Jones’ May issue includes a truly astounding series of articles on population and sustainability that argues, explicitly, that Malthus was right after all. One article, not online, even goes so far as to suggest the government deliberately engineer a zero-GDP-growth economy, a scheme even the author admits suffers from more than a few conceptual and practical flaws.

Heather Mac Donald swats down the New York Times’s sloppy accusations of NYPD racism: “The actual crime rates reveal that blacks are being significantly understopped, compared with their representation in the city’s criminal population, another reason for omitting them from the paper’s reporting.”

And last but not least, Megan McArdle explores whether obesity is as much of a problem as the worrywarts tell us. The surprising conclusion: not really, and we can’t do much about it anyway.