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borners.bsky.social
Researcher with Transit Costs Project 英国基進主義者 (English state buildingism...its better in the Sino-Japanese). Yes I'm a Japanophile and yes that's 19th century print about Land Surveyors by Hokusai and Nagoya station underground.
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All the usual caveats about trusting proprietary rent data apply here (it tends to capture the high end of the market best, since that’s what gets listed on major national listing sites), but, this is a lot:

submitted 4 hours ago • 4 comments

This "costs because democracy" meme is so corrosive, it ignores that of the super-low cost countries, its all 1st world democracies. China is very unusual among major dictatorships. Also misses that the "democracy" process that imposes costs...isn't very democratic i.e. local small time elites.

submitted 7 hours ago • 1 comment

"except 1930's" i.e. the only time we made progress without running down the rest of the infrastructure budget. The public isn't giving the money and never will. And that's the normal 1st world approach. Social housing is only significant in 10 countries globally.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

The 1947 Town and Country Planning Act was more important for the future of British railway and transport than the 1947 nationalisation of all railways.

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

This is such a good tweet, in that it eloquently summarizes practically all of present-day political economy.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Sensible @paulswinney.bsky.social on the lack of devolution within devolution. Its actually interesting how Ireland, Scotland, and Wales all replicate English problems. And saying Scotland is "moved from one ill-fitting geography to another" is 😬. www.centreforcities.org/publication/...

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

A test for any Welfare state expansionist is "what's the VAT in the Nordic countries". (for Welfare state cutters its "if Putin and Xi can't defeat pensioners what makes you think you can").

submitted 1 day ago • 2 comments

The responses to this are all limited to praising the society of "the country". The problem is the state, not its peoples. Its a 3rd state governing a bunch of very functional societies. But society can compensate for a bad state only so much.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Please pardon my language, but what the fuck (at the headline, not the OP)? Cyrus II, the founder of the Achaemenids (the first Persian Empire) gets *really good* press in Jewish scripture, because he allowed the exiles to return and rebuild the temple; they benefited from Achaemenid tolerance.

submitted 1 day ago • 19 comments

I hadn't realised that much of the US sunbelt has clamped down on sprawl and thus they are seeing house price rises.

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

I understand the Portuguese (weak economy, lots of run down areas and very fancy touristy places) and the Venetian’s , but the Catalans are the richest people in Spain and all of the tourism problems is cause they refuse to build housing in Barcelona

submitted 2 days ago • 6 comments

Ideology of the state includes this kind of unnecessary militarism outside Europe*. You can see this also with the current deployment in the Indo-Pacific too. And its not that different from Anti-Israel people who think the UK's position has any real importance to anything going in the Middle East

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Mine is the constant citations of Bent Flyvbjerg on underestimation of costs and overestimation of ridership on urban rail lines, based on datasets from the 1980s, coming from specific contexts (early US light rail, Latin American middle-income traps); by 2000, US rail ridership estimates got good.

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

World history is largely a long list of military solutions. Politicians who say there is "no military solution" to an active conflict are in most cases trying to excuse their inaction.

submitted 2 days ago • 12 comments

Just the right? I mean every person who kvetches about "Neoliberalism" is in complete denial that all the "shrinking of the state" stuff was cancelled out by "lol Pension/NHS go burr".

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Two escalators and a fixed stair. Left: Montréal's metro Right: Brescia's metro Spot the difference.

submitted 3 days ago • 8 comments

Actually, kings are probably ok as long as they are constitutional monarchs in multiparty parliamentary systems based on proportional representation, alongside deep devolution into politically cohesive megaregions that retain most of their fiscal capacity alongside a thin-server federal govt.

submitted 4 days ago • 14 comments

"What do we want?" "Multiparty parliamentary democracy!" "When do we want it?" "As soon as humanly possible."

submitted 4 days ago • 8 comments

S-tier Dad bragging.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments