Densely Speaking

The (Express)Way to Segregation: Evidence from Chicago (Sara Bagagli) Sara Bagagli is an Assistant Professor of Real Estate Economics and Finance at London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research contributes to our understanding of what drives the (unequal) distribution of people and economic activity across space, focusing on the role of transportation infrastructure and urban for...

Procurement and Infrastructure Costs (Zach Liscow) Zach Liscow is Professor of Law at Yale Law School. From 2022-23, he was the Chief Economist at the White House Office of Management and Budget. We discuss his recent article, Procurement and Infrastructure Costs (with William Nober and Cailin Slattery), which collects new project-level data and surveys of state DOT officials to document variation...

How Much Road Does America Have? (Erick Guerra) Professor Erick Guerra is a Professor and Associate Dean for Research at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design. We discuss his recent article, Urban Roadway in America: The Amount, Extent, and Value (with Gilles Duranton & Xinyu Ma), which provides the first comprehensive estimate of the amount, share, and value of roadways acr...

In a Bad State: Responding to State and Local Budget Crises (David Schleicher) David Schleicher is the Walter E. Meyer Professor of Property and Urban Law at Yale Law School. He is the author of In a Bad State: Responding to State and Local Budget Crises . He also co-hosts the podcast Digging a Hole with YLS colleague Samuel Moyn. Appendices: David Schleicher: New York Times article The Queen Bee...

Neighborhood Formation and Neighborhood Effects (Dionissi Aliprantis) Dionisi Aliprantis is an assistant vice president and a senior research economist in the Research Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, the director of the Bank’s Program on Economic Inclusion, and the founding director of the Math Movement . He is the author of “Making Our Neighborhoods, Making Our Selves”: A Rev...

Blockbusting and the Challenges Faced by Black Families in Building Wealth through Housing in the Postwar US (Jonathan Rose) Jonathan Rose is the Historian of the Federal Reserve System and senior economist and economic advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He is the co-author of Blockbusting and the Challenges Faced by Black Families in Building Wealth through Housing in the Postwar Uni...

The National Zoning Atlas (Sara Bronin and Scott Markley) Densely Speaking programming note: this is the first episode of our new season. Sara Bronin , Professor at the Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning and Chair of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, is the Director of the National Zoning Atlas . Scott Markley is the Geospatial Project Coordinator at the Nat...

Remote Work and City Decline: Lessons From the Garment District (Clay Gillette) Clay Gillette is the Max E. Greenberg Professor of Contract Law at New York University School of Law. He is the author of Remote Work and City Decline: Lessons from the Garment District , 15 Journal of Legal Analysis 201 (2023). Appendices: Clay Gillette: the book In a Bad State (by David Schleicher), work by Joan Didi...

Firms, Fires, and Firebreaks: The Impact of the 1906 San Francisco Disaster on Business Agglomeration James Siodla is an Associate Professor of Economics at Colby College. He is the author of Firms, fires, and firebreaks: The impact of the 1906 San Francisco disaster on business agglomeration . We also discuss related work by him: Clean slate: Land-use changes in San Francisco after the 1906 disas...

The Role of Private Law in Land Use Regulation (Molly Brady) Molly Brady is the Louis D. Brandeis Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. She is the author of Turning Neighbors into Nuisances .   Appendices: Molly Brady: Magic Mike’s Last Dance and This $5,750-a-Month Brooklyn Apartment Has a Smell Test .   Greg Shill : the Culdesac development and its reported lease condition that residents not p...

The Impact of WFH on Brick-and-Mortar Retail (Lindsay Relihan) Lindsay Relihan is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. School of Business at Purdue University. She is the author of The Impact of Work-from-Home on Brick-and-Mortar Retail Establishments: Evidence from Card Transactions , with James Duguid, Bryan Kim, and Chris Wheat. Appendices: Lindsay Relihan: Cities...

The Work-from-Home Technology Boon and Its Consequences (Andra Ghent) Andra Ghent is Professor of Finance at the University of Utah David Eccles School of Business. She is the author of The Work-from-Home Technology Boon and Its Consequences , with Morris A. Davis and Jesse Gregory. Appendices: Andra Ghent: the miniseries Show Me a Hero and the book Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American C...

Work From Home and the Office Real Estate Apocalypse (Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh) Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh is the Earle W. Kazis and Benjamin Schore Professor of Real Estate and Professor of Finance at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business.  He is the author of Work From Home and the Office Real Estate Apocalypse (joint with Arpit Gupta and Vrinda Mittal).   Appendices: Stijn Van Nieuwerburg...

Special Series on History and Urban Economics - Part III This episode is the third and final in a series based on a new special issue on Urban Economics and History in Regional Science and Urban Economics. It contains a series of short conversations with authors and concludes Season 2 of the show. Today’s Guests: Ed Glaeser is the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics and Chairman of the D...

Special Series on History and Urban Economics - Part II This episode is the second in a series based on a forthcoming special issue on Urban Economics and History , to be published in the journal Regional Science and Urban Economics. It contains a series of short conversations with multiple authors. Guests: Brian Beach is Assistant Professor of Economics at Vanderbilt University and Dan Bogart is...

Special Series on History and Urban Economics - Part I This episode is the first in a series based on a forthcoming special issue focused on Urban Economics and History , to be published in the journal Regional Science and Urban Economics. It contains a series of short conversations with multiple authors. Guests: Walker Hanlon is Associate Professor of Economics at Northwestern University and Step...

Evan Mast, Does Building New Apartments in Low-Income Areas Cause Displacement? Evan Mast , Assistant Professor of Economics at Notre Dame, is our guest. The focus of the conversation is Evan's paper Local Effects of Large New Apartment Buildings in Low Income Areas (with Brian J. Asquith and Davin Reed). Kate Pennington , Economist at the U.S. Census Bureau Center for Economic Studies, is our gue...

Constitutional Law for NIMBYs? The guests discuss the National League of Cities' Principles of Home Rule for the 21st Century , which two of them (Nestor Davidson and Richard Schragger) helped draft and the third (David Schleicher) has criticized as "Constitutional Law for NIMBYs." Nestor Davison is the Walsh Professor of Real Estate, Land Use, and Property Law and the Faculty Director o...

Diego Puga's Favorite Urban Economics Papers of 2021 Diego Puga is Professor of Economics at CEMFI in Madrid, Spain. In recent years, he has made a tradition of sharing his favorite urban economics papers of the year (specifically, urban econ articles published in the calendar year). In this interview, we chat about his favorites from 2021. They appear below as well as in this thread . He did simi...

Peter Norton, The Past and Future of Driving in High-Tech Cities Peter Norton is an associate professor of history in the Department of Engineering and Society at the University of Virginia. He is the author of the new book Autonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-Tech Driving as well as Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City and Persistent Pedestrianism: Urban Walking in...

Marcus Casey - The Evolution of Black Neighborhoods Since Kerner Marcus Casey is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution . Author of The Evolution of Black Neighborhoods Since Kerner (with Bradley L. Hardy). [N.B. "Kerner" refers to the Kerner Commission Report on the Causes, Causes, Events, and After...

Matt Kahn and Mac McComas - Unlocking the Potential of Post-Industrial Cities Matt Kahn , Provost Professor of Economics at the University of Southern California, and Mac McComas , senior program manager at John Hopkins’ 21st Century Cities Initiative, joins us to discuss their recent book, Unlocking the Potential of Post-Industrial Cities . Appendices: Mac McComas: Two episodes of Jennifer Doleac...

Cailin Slattery, Bidding for Firms Cailin R. Slattery , Assistant Professor of Business, Economics Division, Columbia Business School, joins us to discuss her paper: Bidding for Firms: Subsidy Competition in the U.S. David R. Agrawal joins as guest co-host. He is Associate Professor, Martin School of Public Policy & Administration, University of Kentucky, and Associate Professor, Department of...

Rebecca Sanders and Robert Schneider, Fatal Pedestrian Crash Locations and Characteristics First episode in the new season of Densely Speaking: Conversations About Cities, Economics & Law. We release new interviews periodically. Take a spin through our back catalogue and subscribe so you don't miss our next release. Rebecca Sanders is the Founder and Principal Investigator of Safe Streets Rese...

Transportation Law Symposium Special - Beth Osborne (Keynote) Today episode is the sixth and final in a special series of episodes we are running from a first-of-its-kind academic event on law and transportation policy, The Future of Law & Transportation Symposium , hosted by the Iowa Law Review and featuring scholars from multiple disciplines. After a brief intro from show co-host Greg Sh...