Technology, coupled with present economic conditions and the interest of younger Americans in sustainability, is enabling a climate favorable to collaborative consumption. More individuals will be engaged over time in this “sharing economy” because underemployment of the middle class, and a...

Professor Fershee responds to Professor David B. Spence’s article about local hydraulic fracturing bans: The Political Economy of Local Vetoes, 93 Texas L. Rev. 351 (2015). Professor Spence notes that the shale oil and gas debate provides an example of “an age-old political problem that the...

Ever since the Supreme Court's landmark decision in United States v. Lopez invalidating the Gun-Free School Zones Act as beyond the scope of Congress's Commerce Clause power, scholarly commentators from both sides of the ideological spectrum have wondered whether the Court would apply the...

As my contribution to a symposium, I was asked to identify and to discuss conflicts between environmental regulation and pursuit of the goals of national energy policy. I identify three contexts in which I see clear conflicts between environmental regulation and energy policy - gasoline...

Concerns related to housing affordability are widespread in cities worldwide, and discussions about adopting rent control policies abound. This paper studies the effects of a rent control policy adopted in Catalonia in September 2020 that applies to some but not all municipalities. The policy...

The paper examines the waste management issues in the villages annexed to administrative-territorial units of the Romanian cities which have been frequently neglected by urban waste operators. The lack of waste collection services in such peri-urban communities favored the illegal waste disposal...

The lack of proper waste collection systems leads to plastic pollution in rivers in proximity to rural communities. This environmental threat is more widespread among mountain communities which are prone to frequent flash floods during the warm season. This paper estimates the amounts of plastic...

Circuity, the ratio of network distances to straight-line distances, is an important measure of urban street network structure and transportation efficiency. Circuity results from a circulation network’s configuration, planning, and underlying terrain. In turn, it impacts how humans use urban...

Complex systems have been widely studied by social and natural scientists in terms of their dynamics and their structure. Scholars of cities and urban planning have incorporated complexity theories from qualitative and quantitative perspectives. From a structural standpoint, the urban form may...

Circuity, the ratio of network distances to straight-line distances, is an important measure of urban street network structure and transportation efficiency. Circuity results from a circulation network’s configuration, planning, and underlying terrain. In turn, it impacts how humans use urban...