Economist Edward Glaeser of Harvard reviews a new book on traffic by Tom Vanderbilt:

“Some environmentally inclined urbanists have rushed to the view that rising gas prices will take us back to nineteenth-century urban densities, hopefully with a little less cholera. Since the belief that people respond to incentives is at the heart of the economist’s catechism, I certainly share their view that rising gas prices will do something to behavior. But I am less confident that even extreme prices will mean an end to cars and car-based living.” Read the whole thing.

And author and ex-Chicagoan Alan Ehrenhalt argues at length that what we tend to call “gentrification” is really just part of a large-scale rearrangement of urban areas:

“We are not witnessing the abandonment of the suburbs or a movement of millions of people back to the city all at once. But we are living at a moment in which the massive outward migration of the affluent that characterized the second half of the twentieth century is coming to an end. For several decades now, cities in the United States have wished for a ‘24/7’ downtown, a place where people live as well as work, and keep the streets busy, interesting, and safe at all times of day. This is what urbanist Jane Jacobs preached in the 1960s, and it has long since become the accepted goal of urban planners. . . . Now that’s starting to happen, fueled by the changing mores of the young and by gasoline prices fast approaching $5-per-gallon.”

Ehrenhalt isn’t omniscient, though: “In downtown Charlotte, a luxury condominium is scheduled for construction this year that will allow residents to drive their cars into a garage elevator, ride up to the floor they live on, and park right next to their front door. I have a hard time figuring out whether that is a triumph for urbanism or a defeat.”

Um, Alan, it’s a defeat, because those folks are not likely to be on the streets much of the time.

The comments posted on Ehrenhalt’s article are civil and informative.