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THE ORIGINS OF EFFICIENCY
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US Subways Build Too Many Cross Passages
I wrote the following piece for IFP’s Transit Abundance Playbook, a collection of 15 ideas to improve transit delivery in the US.
Jun 25
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Brian Potter
167
8
7
Converting Coal Plants to Natural Gas
For the better part of the last several hundred years, coal was the fuel of choice for generating power.
Jun 19
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Brian Potter
156
6
7
Biological Evolution and Information Acquisition
A few weeks ago we looked at a simulation of technological evolution by economist Brian Arthur, in which he was able to start with simple building…
Jun 11
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Brian Potter
133
6
4
How Long Does It Take to Plan a Bridge?
Many folks, including me, have observed that it seems to take much longer to build infrastructure in the US than it used to.
Jun 4
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Brian Potter
167
29
12
Where Are the Economies of Scale in Homebuilding?
Over the last few months we’ve examined the extent of the construction industry’s productivity problem.
May 28
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Brian Potter
227
55
17
The Rise of Build-to-Rent Housing
A major shift in the housing market in the last several years is the rapidly increasing popularity of “build-to-rent” homes — single-family homes that…
May 21
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Brian Potter
167
30
13
How Long Do We Wait for New Inventions?
Mostly not very long
May 7
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Brian Potter
733
77
92
How an Oil Refinery Works
Though wind and solar continue to carve out larger and larger shares of world energy supply, the modern world still runs on petroleum, and will continue…
Apr 30
•
Brian Potter
439
3
31
Construction Costs Rarely Fall
Not long ago we looked at construction productivity trends for the US and for countries around the world. We found that in the U.S., and in most other…
Apr 23
•
Brian Potter
179
18
15
Helium Is Hard to Replace
The war in Iran, and the subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz, has unfortunately made us all familiar with details of the petroleum supply chain…
Apr 9
•
Brian Potter
307
42
26
Information and Technological Evolution
I spend a lot of time reading about the nature of technological progress, and I’ve found that the literature on technology is somewhat uneven.
Apr 2
•
Brian Potter
172
23
12
The Age of the Amplifier
As we’ve noted more than a few times before, for most of the 20th century AT&T’s Bell Labs was the premier industrial research lab in the US.
Mar 27
•
Brian Potter
214
9
10
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