Georgish Labs is a research lab for healthy towns and cities. We study how the shape of a place shapes the people in it, and we publish what we find so neighbors can act on it.
America was built around people first and cars second. The evidence says the first way worked. We are starting small, and we are starting now.
Why “Georgish”
After Henry George. In 1879 he argued that the value of land comes from the community around it, so tax the land, not the work and buildings on it. Do that and the empty lot downtown stops being cheap to hold; a town fills in from the centre instead of spreading from the edge. We take the instinct more than the doctrine: a town's shape is a policy choice.
Research first
Every claim traces to a source. We publish the briefs, the data and the code, and we correct mistakes in public.
Advocacy is the product
Research that stays in a PDF changes nothing. Our findings become campaigns people can read in five minutes and bring to city hall. One site, one ask.
Numbers people can feel
A statistic is an abstraction until it has a face. Minutes door to door. Dollars a month. Deaths a year. Homes within a short walk of a train.
A century of shortcuts
Every decade since the car arrived has had one. Streetcars torn out, freeways through downtown, the square paved for parking, the road widened until it filled again. Lately the shortcuts leave the ground: a vacuum tube that has carried no one, a tunnel for cars under Las Vegas, a sports car lifted over a Texas field. Each promised the train was no longer needed. The geometry never agreed.
Debt is not the excuse
America built its best infrastructure in its hardest years. The Golden Gate Bridge was a bond vote in the Depression, repaid by tolls. A line that pays its way can still be financed. Pair it with a measure, and the bond market will show up.
Starting now
We are small and new. The first briefs are in progress. There is no newsletter, no feed and nothing to sign up for yet; this page is the whole lab for now.