Here are five important articles related to urbanism from the past week:

• The Next Real Estate Boom: An important article by Patrick Doherty and Christopher Leinberger on how (the right type of) housing can turn the economy around. (Washington Monthly)

• Should Cities Be Run Like Software? If you enjoyed my post on Open-Source Urbanism, you’ll like this post as well. It asks what if we rethought the (currently haphazard) management of cities and instead re-imagined them as products of software engineering? (Infrastructurist)

• Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood talks about livable communities: Secretary of the Department of Transportation Ray LaHood (a Republican) would like to build the infrastructure that would let you leave your car at home. (Grist)

• The Selfish Automobile: Why are otherwise generous and smart people sometimes selfish and irrational? (Planetizen)

• Minimize parking, maximize the city: The city is not longer at the automobile’s mercy. But zoning hasn’t caught up to this new reality. The article focuses on Boston, but it’s conclusions are applicable to almost any urban area. (Boston Globe)