Government / Politics
You might have been waiting for this article, and its many revelations about life inside the Department of Housing and urban Development, since January or November.
New York
A 35-year-old law is not living up to its moniker, the 'anti-NIMBY law'. A bill co-sponsored by a group associated with the YIMBY movement would fine cities $10,000 per housing unit if they fail to comply with the law.
The Mercury News
SB 35 (Wiener) and AB 199 (Chu) make it more costly to build housing by requiring prevailing wages where applicable, pleasing construction unions but making affordable housing less affordable, opines CALmatters political columnist, Dan Walters.
CALmatters
There will be important functions in public space that are not always “art” whose value is not in proportion to their prettiness.
Shelterforce/Rooflines
Streetsblog USA ponders whether President Trump's $1 trillion big-ticket legislative item was dead before arrival.
Streetsblog USA
No one's suggesting that freeways will be converted to tollways, but a pattern is emerging that when freeways are widened, express lanes, financed in part by user fees, are being added rather than mixed-flow lanes. Case in point: the Inland Empire.
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
Regular "emissions events" at Texas heavy industrial facilities cause a lot of unauthorized pollution. But few consequences mean the companies responsible don't have to crack down.
The Texas Tribune
The WIFIA federal loans program provides start-up capital to local water infrastructure projects. The program is designed to encourage experimentation and cost-effective construction strategies.
Brookings
The Model Minimum Uniform Crash Criteria's latest edition has new instructions for reporting the emerging sector of autonomous vehicles.
GOV TECH - FUTURE STRUCTURE
The Jacksonville City Council's decision in 2014 to renew a six-cents county gas tax is paying big dividends for road construction in Duvall County, Florida. Every county in Florida has a gas tax from five cents to a maximum 11.9 cents per gallon.
The Florida Times-Union
The original purpose of President Trump's press conference were lost as the discussion devolved.
Smart Cities Dive
A think-piece published by CityLab argues that public space, and the ideals it embodies, are under threat from the racist groups that gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia last weekend.
CityLab
A day of reckoning has come for state lawmakers who proposed protections for motorists who attack protestors from behind the wheels of their car. A tragedy at protests in Charlotte has cast new light on the dangerous potential of such laws.
The Dallas Morning News
Three bills at the top of the Democratic leadership's housing agenda will have little impact on the state's chronic housing shortage according to multiple analyses, and wouldn't affect the outcome of a Bay Area mega-development controversy.
Los Angeles Times
The $500 million, eight-mile extension, mostly paid by private funds and express lane tolls, broke ground August 9. Transurban, the private company in the public-private partnership, will pay $15 million annually for public transit improvements.
Planetizen
An approved, 55 micro-unit, mixed-use development with no parking sited on a transit corridor with 15-minute headways has been halted by a legal ruling after neighborhood opponents proved the bus was not meeting its schedule.
Seattle Weekly
National organizations are mobilizing around housing as a human right.
Right to the City
Another unpleasant reminder for the Trump Administration that there are three equal branches of government: A federal appeals court ruled 9-2 that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt must enforce a rule to reduce methane emissions from oil and gas wells.
CNN Politics
At the helm of a movement to think beyond concrete solutions to transportation challenges in North Texas are the mayors of Fort Worth, Grapevine, and Arlington.
NBC DFW
Depressed by city planning in your neck of the woods? Ben Brown says to lower your expectations.
PlaceShakers
