September Must-Reads: Top 10 Articles From Last Month

Housing and transportation were two key themes of Planetizen’s most popular stories of September. The top two slots are taken by housing affordability topics, while the transportation stories run the gamut from rail projects to school drop-off congestion to analysis of how Project 2025 policy proposals might impact transportation systems nationwide. Rounding out the list is an examination of why planning as a career is not as popular as other careers, and a fun round-up of music album covers that give a nod to urban planning.

Here is the full list:

1. Only Two US Metro Areas Are Affordable for Homebuyers 

According to an analysis from the National Association of Realtors, only two U.S. metro areas, Youngstown and Akron, Ohio, remain affordable for median-income homebuyers due to rising housing costs nationwide.

2. New Jersey Housing Laws Take Effect in January 

New Jersey’s new housing laws, effective January 2025, will require cities to develop plans to meet housing demands and promote more affordable and diverse housing options.

3. Texas High-Speed Rail Awarded $63.9M Federal Grant 

The Texas high-speed rail project has received a $63.9 million federal grant to continue planning its Dallas-to-Houston route, moving closer to construction despite several obstacles.

4. Honolulu Skyline Train Enters Final Construction Phase

The Honolulu Skyline train has entered its final construction phase, which will extend service to downtown Honolulu. When completed, it will be the nation’s first large-scale, publicly run automated metro system.

5. When ‘Prioritizing All Modes’ Is a Lie 

Anna Zivarts explores how trying to prioritize all transportation modes equally often leads to ineffective outcomes, favoring cars over other modes and perpetuating car dependency.

6. Urban Planning Is Often Overlooked as a Career — Why Is That?

This article explores various reasons why urban planning is not a more popular career, including lack of awareness of the career, underrepresentation of the profession in mainstream media, and misconceptions about the career’s scope.

7. PDX International Airport’s New Terminal Is a Mass-Timber Marvel

Portland International Airport's new terminal, featuring mass timber construction, aims to accommodate 35 million annual passengers by 2045 in a sustainable way​.

8. School Drop-Off Traffic Is Causing a Congestion — and Social — Crisis

Long school drop-off lines are causing traffic issues and concerns around the environmental and health impacts of idling vehicles. What can be done to address this potentially harmful, and isolating, issue?

9. Great Album Covers with Urban Planning Themes

This blog from Gabe Bailer has gathered a list of 11 album covers with urban planning themes and offers analysis on how they reflect cities, spatial structures, and planning concepts through music art.

10. How Would Project 2025 Affect America’s Transportation System?

The blog from Marcelo Redmond discusses how Project 2025 could reshape America’s transportation system by prioritizing cars and highways, deregulating environmental standards, and sidelining public transit and sustainability efforts.

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Editor’s note: Portions of this Planetizen blog post were generated using OpenAI’s language model, ChatCPT. Planetizen editors have been looking into ethical uses of AI in journalism and wanted to test it. In this post, ChatGPT was used to summarize previously published Planetizen stories, which provided text that served as a starting point and then was edited and refined further. We want to assure our readers that any policies adopted around the use of AI on Planetizen content will be grounded in transparency.