Construction Physics

Construction Physics

Home
Essays
Reading Lists
Archive
About
Is Land-Use Regulation Holding Back Construction Productivity?
Ed Glaeser is perhaps the pre-eminent urban economist working today, and I’ve cited his work repeatedly when looking at land-use restrictions and…
 • 
Brian Potter
21
On Klein on Construction
In the New York Times, Ezra Klein investigated the recent Goolsbee and Syverson paper on construction productivity we recently looked at. Klein suggests…
 • 
Brian Potter
28
Why Are Nuclear Power Construction Costs so High? Part II
To briefly recap, we previously found that nuclear power construction costs in the US and around the world steadily increased from the late 1960s…
 • 
Brian Potter
14
Why Are Nuclear Power Construction Costs so High? Part I
Nuclear power currently makes up slightly less than 20% of the total electricity produced in the US, largely from plants built in the 70s and 80s.
 • 
Brian Potter
30
Reading List 02/08/2025
Ship-mounted lasers, Santorini earthquakes, carbon sequestration via nuclear explosion, the fall of concentrating solar, and more, and more.
 • 
Brian Potter
5
The Grid, Part II: The Golden Age of the Power Industry
Welcome to Part II of our history of the electric power industry.
 • 
Brian Potter
14
The Rise and Fall of the Manufactured Home, Part II
When we left off, over a few short years mobile home manufacturing had grown into a massive industry, and was supplying an increasingly large fraction…
 • 
Brian Potter
12
How Much Safer has Construction Gotten?
When talking about (the lack of) construction productivity growth, or the fact that we used to build things much faster than we do today, commentators…
 • 
Brian Potter
10
The Rise and Fall of the Manufactured Home, Part I
A recurring theme of this newsletter is the failure of prefabrication (building homes in factories instead of on-site) to revolutionize the housing…
 • 
Brian Potter
10
Reading List 05/03/25
Blackout in Spain and Portugal, Chinese robot adoption, energy maneuverability theory, the Florida real estate market, battery manufacturing…
 • 
Brian Potter
2
Why Do We Need Infrastructure Policy?
My title at IFP is "Senior Infrastructure Fellow," which means that in addition to publishing this newsletter, I do work related to infrastructure…
 • 
Brian Potter
6
How much do construction costs matter? Some factors that affect the price of housing
One of the goals of this newsletter is to figure out ways to improve construction productivity and reduce the costs of construction, particularly…
 • 
Brian Potter
12
© 2025 Brian Potter
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start writingGet the app
Substack is the home for great culture