Urban Issues

How communities choose to shape their built environment and neighborhoods can powerfully impact a place’s sense of connectedness and how local relationships develop. However, in our time of digital distractions and social distrust, so many projects designed to promote social capital fail to meaningfully bring people together.  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 »

Data published by the University of Minnesota Accessibility Observatory a few months ago reveals some of the benefits of congestion relief that resulted from the COVID pandemic.  read more »

There is a strip mall not a stone’s throw away from my house that contains a Georgio’s pizza, a daycare center, and a plasma bank called “Freedom”. I live in a neighborhood in Cleveland that has a poverty rate upwards of 50%. For those not in the know, plasma banks are places where people sell their blood from which plasma is extracted through intermediaries, such as Freedom, to be sold at scale to pharmaceutical companies for various research and development purposes so it ultimately translates into high-end products that can be sold on the knowledge economy market.  read more »

A few weeks ago, I noted that there appeared to be correlation between government efforts to get more people into multifamily housing and low fertility rates.  read more »

Urban elites are far more likely than other Americans to oppose gasoline powered cars, SUVs of all types, and gas stoves, according to a survey released last week by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity.  read more »

Frequent readers here may have seen me write about my experience growing up in 1970s Detroit. I’ve often said that seeking ways to improve the city and not abandon it, is what propelled me into a career in urban planning.  read more »

As the glint of the Golden State - rub worn by misdirection, doubt, and fear - fades just another little bit each day  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 »

America’s transit systems carried nearly 75 percent as many riders in November 2023 as the same month in 2019, according to data released on Friday by the Federal Transit Administration.  read more »