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New World Economics
Personal blog · newworldeconomics.comeconomicshistorydesign
New World Economics is a personal blog at newworldeconomics.com about economics, history and design. Since 2012, 23 different Hacker News readers have linked it 65 times, most often “The Fate of Empires (1976) [pdf]”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-18, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 10 of 38 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link New World Economics for essays on walkable, dense traditional city design, including Really Narrow Streets, transport, and how banks work. Commenters cite it often as a source for urban planning arguments.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 38 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- The Fate of Empires (1976) [pdf]2 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2015-05-18
- The Traditional City Is the Densest City2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-01-10
- /archives/tradcityarchive.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-02-20
- The Problem with Bicycles (2010)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-08-29
- /archives/2008/072008.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-03-20
- /category/traditional-city-post-heroic-materialism/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-11-23
- /category/traditional-city-post-heroic-materialism/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-02-17
What Hacker News says?
I've been thinking about the transportation issue. Self driving cars may or may not be widely available by the time they are finished. But they could bypass it all just by building sensors into the roads, or just tracks. You could then have a system of self driving busses that people could order with a smartphone, and then find the most efficient route to get everyone where they want to go. And then you have minimal…
Comment linking /archives/2010/022110.html
on “New Cities”Submitted What a Real Train System Looks Like (2009) as a story · 240 points
HN discussionthis ? http://newworldeconomics.com/corbusier-nouveau-3-really-narr...
Comment linking /corbusier-nouveau-3-really-narrow-streets-with-high-rises/
on “The Boring Company [video]”Submitted Place and Non-Place (2009) as a story · 37 points
HN discussion> The only places that require comparatively large bicycle parking areas are large transport hubs, and in the example, the added distance for pedestrians is less than going between platforms, if any at all. Everything requires comparatively large bicycle parking areas. Here https://newworldeconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/osa... is perhaps 5-10% of the visitors bike parking, making the street 30-40% blocked…
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2017/01/gakugeidai2-2.jpg
on “Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall”Submitted The Process of Urban Change (2017) as a story · 25 points
HN discussion> A small car world would be 100% -> 60% resource reduction. You're missing the part I replied to which was about bikes being usable 11 months of the year. If you need all the car infrastructure for 1 month, plus the bike infrastructure, that makes it overall worse, not better. But discard that, if biking is a 60% reduction, then a walking+train world would be way more. Your link talks of a train station building a…
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2009/12/gakugeidaigaku.jpg
on “Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall”Submitted The Fate of Empires (1976) [pdf] as a story · 13 points
HN discussionI do see your point. The author is modelling this as a transitional form of a suburban neighbourhood that could later be intensified. Additionally, it should be read with understanding of his previous writing on cities [1]. You'll see he capitalizes a lot of terms (e.g. Really Narrow Street) which are intended as references to concepts he has fleshed-out in other posts. A major component of his vision for cities is…
Comment linking /category/traditional-city-post-heroic-materialism/
on “Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive”Submitted The Gold Standard Didn’t Disappear in 1971, It Just Went Underground as a story · 7 points
HN discussion...and a [shop, street, park, restaurant, school, etc] will have 10x as many people that are living within walking distance. This point is made well in this article: http://newworldeconomics.com/how-to-make-a-pile-of-dough-wit... >Our basic goal, in all this, is to deliver roughly triple the density as this “New Urbanist” model, while still preserving what looks very much like a “traditional Small Town America singl…
Comment linking /how-to-make-a-pile-of-dough-with-the-traditional-city-5-the-new-new-suburbanism/
on “Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive”Submitted The Problem with Bicycles (2010) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThe model that gets us out of this predicament is trivially simple and literally fits on one line: Really Narrow Streets Unfortunately most North American local government has a savagely visceral hatred of that idea. Full disclosure I stole this idea from [0]. [0] http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2006/032606.htm
Comment linking /archives/2006/032606.htm
on “Why Many Cities Have No Money”Submitted The Process of Urban Change as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThere's a critique of that design on new world economics: http://newworldeconomics.com/lets-kick-around-carfree-com/ I think the author did a poor job of arguing there compared to his usual articles, but he does make some decent points.
Comment linking /lets-kick-around-carfree-com/
on “How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations”Submitted The Problem with Bicycles (2010) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionCities designed for bikes and bicyclists, are still not cities designed for humans. https://newworldeconomics.com/the-problem-with-bicycles/ Bikes are expensive personal transportation, compared to not owning any, they take up space in every home with muddy, oily mechanisms, they take up a lot of space in bicycle parks outside every desirable destination serving to push everything further apart for humans on foot, t…
Comment linking /the-problem-with-bicycles/
on “How the Dutch created a casual biking culture”Submitted The Traditional City Is the Densest City as a story · 1 points
HN discussion> Also you need wide spaces between buildings to have light at ground level. Tell that to almost anywhere in Europe: http://newworldeconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Shin...
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Shinjuku-Tokyo-Japan.jpg
on “3D crosswalk in Iceland helps slow down speeding motorists”Submitted Traditional City Is the Densest City as a story · 1 points
HN discussionBus themed solutions would definitely be an improvement over LA's status quo. However a better idea would be to reduce the need to travel long distances by building denser. LA roads are super wide right now, so the easiest way to raise density would be by putting buildings in the middle of the road, leaving a Really Narrow Street (tm) along either side. Ground floors of new buildings could be commercial, upper floor…
Comment linking /the-eco-metropolis/
on “To fix L.A.'s traffic, we need tolls”Submitted The Traditional City Is the Densest City as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI basically just parroted Nathan Lewis, who has a great blog series on the topic: http://newworldeconomics.com/category/traditional-city-post-... . It's virtually the same message from Andres Duany. His talk from 30 years ago is still so eerily precise and comprehensive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMvwHDFVpCE . When I feel presumptuous, I email this to people (deaf ears, mostly). Leon Krier bangs the same drum,…
Comment linking /category/traditional-city-post-heroic-materialism/
on “Let’s not demonize driving, just stop subsidizing it”Submitted What a Real Train System Looks Like (2009) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionIf you're interested in this topic, I highly recommend this long series of articles: http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/tradcityarchive.ht...
Comment linking /archives/tradcityarchive.html
on “Let's Build a Traditional City and Make a Profit”Submitted How Much Should Parking Cost? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThat’s not actually true, at all. This is from a tiny village in Germany: http://newworldeconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/GV-3... This is a village in Italy: http://newworldeconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/iv3.... A Swiss village: http://newworldeconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/sv2.... A French village from above: http://newworldeconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/egui... Another French…
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2009/07/obernai-alsace.jpg
on “A Low-Cost Solution to Traffic”Submitted How to have fun as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThis is not directly what you want, but a better statement of the article's fundamental claim is given here: http://newworldeconomics.com/the-eco-metropolis/ and the other articles on that site give some ideas about how to make it work.
Comment linking /the-eco-metropolis/
on “A Low-Cost Solution to Traffic”You don't necerally need high buildings to create density. You can have density with single family homes, if you have narrow streets and less parking. http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2011/061211.html There is such a thing as sound insulation, not every appartment building is noisy. Not everything need to be super high density. There are thresholds that make a local restaurant, corner store, transit stop et…
Comment linking /archives/2011/061211.html
on “A Traditional City Primer”
