Weekly Writers Round-Up: Decentralized Urban Planning, Employment in the Gig Economy, and Tech Market Dominance

Each week, we’ll be featuring the work of the alumni and current participants of AF’s Writing Fellows Program. A few highlights from the past week are below. For more information on how the program can help launch your career in writing, see here.

Why Urban Design Should Come From the Bottom Up by Nolan Gray (Fall 2015) in Strong Towns
How do cities design themselves?

At a basic level, a city can be understood as two types of spaces: public spaces and private spaces. For as long as humans have built cities, we have been deeply interested in the top-down design of public spaces, from Hippodamus’ street grid to the monumental plazas of Tenochtitlan. The centralization of this element of cities makes sense: urban streets, parks, and plazas are capital- and land-hungry public goods, which might be underprovided if a central authority did not make sure land was set aside for them. At the same time, the design of private spaces has historically been a largely distributed affair, with the built landscape between blocks and parks designed in a decentralized process among thousands of smallholders, including residents, businesses, developers, and architects…

Nobody Is an Employee in the Gig Economy by Fergus Hodgson (Fall 2018) in The Epoch Times
A small number of rideshare drivers want to shoot themselves and their colleagues in the foot. Their lawsuits against the likes of Uber—to classify independent contractors as employees—jeopardize driver roles and convenient transport. The outcomes threaten the broader gig economy, including everything from pet sitting to house cleaning…

Get Ready for a Financial Assault on the Second Amendment by James Setterlund (Summer 2016) in National Review
California Democrat Maxine Waters is the new chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee. To judge from the party’s past behavior and the various proposals emanating from the left, Waters’s Democrats are going to pressure banks, credit unions, and payment companies to severely curtail and even terminate their relationships with firearm manufacturers, licensed gun retailers, and law-abiding citizens exercising their right to purchase and own firearms. In other words, they will use political pressure to force private institutions into creating social policy that threatens constitutional rights…

Market Dominance in Chip Manufacturing Will Mean Higher Prices by Krisztina Pusok (Fall 2017) in InsideSources
One of the most contentious antitrust cases of 2019, FTC v. Qualcomm, is in full swing at a courthouse in San Jose, California. With several other legal cases pending for Qualcomm, a lot is at stake. For Qualcomm, its fundamental business model is what’s at risk. For everyone else? Market competition, innovation and national security…