Housing

If you haven't read Part 1 yet, you can find it here.

Yonah Freemark, a senior research associate with the Urban Institute in Washington, DC, is someone I had the occasion of meeting a couple times in my career. A little more than ten years ago he worked for Chicago’s Metropolitan Planning Council, an independent nonprofit organization created in 1934. MPC’s mission then, and since, has been to challenge inequity and create stronger Chicago neighborhoods and communities.  read more »

Let’s talk about the nation’s housing affordability crisis.

I recently downloaded some 2023 third quarter data from the National Association of Realtors.  read more »

Americans, with little help from government, are reinventing themselves and boosting their prospects by settling in less expensive, less regulated regions where rents and house prices are more affordable.  read more »

The dominant philosophy that guides North American land use and transportation policy is advocacy of car ownership. The logic is simple. If you have a car you have automatic access to a wide variety of geographic employment options at any time of the day or night regardless of weather.  read more »

Much of Seoul is a sea of high-rises. And not just Seoul: Busan and other cities in South Korea have lots of high rises. More than half of all South Korean households live in high rises  read more »

I was a scholarship student in the UK thirty odd years ago and there was a semi-well known band at the time called The Kitchens of Distinction. I have no memory of what their music even sounded like, but the name stayed with me.  read more »

Everyone has a natural habitat. For some people it’s a big house in the suburbs. For others it’s a cabin in the woods. Some people thrive in a high rise tower in the central business district.  read more »

Coming from a country that may soon choose to be led by either a cognitively challenged second-rate codger or a vengeful lunatic, one would like to look north, to Canada, for some inspiration.  read more »

When it comes to setting housing targets, rather than threatening local government with the removal of its powers, State premiers would perhaps be better served by ensuring the targets they set are achievable.  read more »

A new report on housing decries the fact that many unaffordable housing markets have gotten even less affordable in the last few years.  read more »