Blogs

Commuter rail is often sold to the public as a faster means of travel than buses. This can be true if the drive to the park and ride lot is short and your destination is within walking distance of a station. However, it is apparently not true in Austin.  read more »

Robert Samuelson in the Washington Post takes on the role of homeownership in our society. I'm generally a fan of Samuelson's writing, a normally sober, cold-eyed analysis of issues without favor to one ideology over another, so imagine my disappointment when reading him say, "The relentless promotion of homeownership as the embodiment of the American dream has outlived its usefulness."

Of course, there's more to his column. He goes on to say:  read more »

I saw this story in the Omaha World Herald last week: Benefits of stimulus bill spread unevenly over U.S. As I read through it, I became increasingly impressed. The journalists start off by laying out who said what about the benefits of stimulus spending. They provide quotes and facts from the White House, the Congressional Budget Office, and Joe Biden’s spokesperson.  read more »

Logic suggests that a lack of affordable housing in a region will dissuade people from living there, and employment levels will suffer as a result. However, until recently, no one had readily tested this theory and simply relied on this logic to substantiate this assumption. Ritashree Chakrabati and Junfu Zhang of the New England Public Policy Center published a report looking empirically at this theory in the United States.  read more »

Between now and the end of the year, a hot political topic here in New York will be whether to let the Bush tax cuts expire for people in the highest income bracket, as the Obama administration proposes, or whether to extend those cuts for everyone. Advocates taking the latter position will correctly argue that higher rates will be especially harmful to New York, because of the large number of wealthy people, who live here.  read more »

The opposition Liberal-National Coalition, locked in a close battle with the ruling Labor Party in Australia's Saturday elections, has adopted a housing policy to improve the nation's housing affordability. The policy would require states to monitor housing affordability and to release more land for development. There would also be a review of the efficacy of development charges.  read more »

Get a glass of wine. Then click on this link, which plays a video called Community Growth, created in 1959.

Once you've seen the video, read on…

You're probably sitting with a puzzled look – 1959? Aren’t these the exact same issues that are plaguing us today? Don’t those 1959 developments look like many of today’s latest developments? Even the way they bulldozed through the land and stick-built the homes looks just like the methods used today!  read more »

An opinion piece in the Sacramento Bee by Sean Wirth of the Environmental Council of Sacramento could not have been more wrong in its characterization of the causes of the housing bubble in Sacramento.

The article starts out promisingly, correctly noting that:  read more »

The potential for a symbiotic relationship between the environment, cars and people may be about to take a giant leap forward. London's Daily Telegraph reports that a group of engineers from Genco have developed a bio-bug (Volkswagen bug) that runs on human waste. The car is powered for 10,000 miles from the excrement from 70 households (annually). The human waste bio-bug would be carbon neutral because it would not add any greenhouse gas to that already produced.  read more »

The Harlem Community Development Corporation has come up with a rather unique plan to combat high real estate prices in the district. It proposes establishing an open-air market under the Metro North tracks spanning one mile, or 22 city blocks. This new market would accommodate about 900 vendors, helping to increase the now low number of local entrepreneurs and independent retail stores in Harlem.  read more »