Folks in and around Great Barrington in the Berkshires in Massachusetts are working to revive the once direct train service to New York City. I was invited to speak up there, and so I did, and gave a talk about how transportation shapes place. The founder of the movement wrote a nice summary of my talk, which I put a link to here. 

Nice to be named specifically in this great essay by nicholasmbourbaki about the central thesis of my last book. Here’s the key quote: “For a journalistic work aimed at a popular audience that thoroughly presents the idea of markets as creatures of government, see Alex Marshall, The Surprising Design of Market Economies (2012). Marshall notes that “[t]ypically in public discourse, we talk about markets as if the only choices are to submit to them, to regulate them, or to run from them.” Id. at 2. He later quotes approvingly from a political commentator: “’In actual fact, there is no such thing as a “free market.” Markets are the creation of government.’” Id. at 21 (quoting Thom Hartmann). Appropriately, Marshall developed his ideas in part while attending lectures at Harvard Law School—including lectures by Roberto Unger. See id. at 21–22.”