Author Archives: Timothy B Lee

As I mentioned last week, I’ve installed Envolve, the software that provides the Facebook-style chat you should see at the lower-right hand corner of your browser window, on the blog. I’ll be around this evening, 9-10 PM Eastern (6-7 PM … Continue reading →

A number of bloggers have gotten into a debate about the merits of tenure. I think the discussion has been hampered by a misunderstanding of what universities do and why tenure is important. Yes, tenure sometimes protects professors who hold … Continue reading →

One of the things I find really interesting about urban planning issues is that each city has its own unique story. I’ve mostly drawn my examples from Washington DC, St. Louis, Philadelphia, and New York because those are the cities … Continue reading →

This week a number of my favorite liberal bloggers are tweeting and blogging from Netroots Nation, the annual conference for wired liberal activists. And as far as I can tell, there are no libertarians at the event. Certainly there don’t … Continue reading →

Jane Jacobs wrote Great American Cities in 1961, a time when elite opinion was almost uniformly hostile to the urban lifestyle. American policymakers at all levels of government pushed policies that undermined urban neighborhoods and pushed people into the suburbs. … Continue reading →

My brother is an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, and he’s recently launched a neat new tool called Envolve, which offers in-browser chatting capabilities for any website. I’ve installed it here on the blog, and will be online for the next … Continue reading →

Nick Schulz weighs in on the liberaltarianism debate: The original fusionist project of Frank Meyer and others was predicated on a belief that libertarians and conservatives (social/religious/paleo) actually agreed on some basic philosophical principles, not just shared goals such as … Continue reading →

Jane Jacobs’s final criterion for successful urban neighborhoods was the existence of aged buildings: If you look about, you will see that only operations that are well established, high-turnover, standardized, or heavily subsidized can afford, commonly, to carry the costs … Continue reading →

As I’ve re-read Great American Cities this summer, I’ve found that the examples in the book are clearer now that I’ve spent a few months each in Philadelphia and New York, two of the cities Jacobs uses for many of … Continue reading →

Ilya Somin has another thoughtful post about the prospects for a liberaltarian movement: The range of issues where libertarians and liberals genuinely agree is narrower than Lee assumes. Most liberals do not in fact agree with libertarians on civil liberties, … Continue reading →