Housing
Townhouse Trend Takes Toronto
In the land of the blooming condo high-rise a different housing type is starting to sprout - the 'urban townhouse'. Tracy Hanes explains what makes such homes attractive to buyers, and looks at three popular townhouse projects.
Micro-Apartments Fill Essential Need
Sarah Watson makes the case for micro-apartments, those controversial 250-350 sq. ft. units that neighbors often oppose but meet a critical need.
Community Benefits Agreement in Brooklyn Draws Criticism from Local Organizations
An agreement between Related Developers and a community organization that has gotten substantial support from an area councilman to support a job training and referral program draws criticism from some groups who feel left out.
Exploitation or Affordable Option? Melbourne Debates Micro Apartments
The increasing scarcity of affordable accommodation in large cities has seen the rise of the 'micro apartment'. Taking its lead from studios but on a much smaller scale, this article questions the appeal of living in a space of less than 15m2.
Chicago Program a Model for Preserving Affordable Housing and Cutting Pollution
A Chicago-based community development financial institution (CDFI) and efficiency group help apartment building owners tame high utility costs, preserve affordable housing, and cut global warming emissions.
Bloomberg Backs Off Plan for Private Development of Public Housing Land
A controversial plan to generate revenue for New York City's struggling public housing authority by allowing private development is being reconfigured and pushed off until the next administration after it received considerable opposition.
Luxury Condo's 'Poor Door' a Metaphor for New York's Inequality
To take advantage of NYC's inclusionary zoning giveaways, developer Extell is including 55 'affordable' units in a luxury condo building planned for Manhattan. Just one hitch: the plan segregates those tenants in their own 'separate entity'.
Mixed-Income Development to Replace Notorious L.A. Housing Project
A scheme to transform a Watts housing project with mixed-use development earned final approval from the L.A. City Council on Wednesday. Shops, town homes, and open spaces are to replace "one of the city's most poverty-stricken and violent areas."
Program to Encourage Affordable Housing in NYC Only Producing Poor Results
A new report by the office of City Councilman Brad Lander finds that New York's voluntary inclusionary housing program is failing to entice developers in large numbers, producing only 2,700 permanently affordable units over the past 8 years.
CA Redevelopment Bill: Communist Land Grab or Catalyst for Affordable Housing?
Amid political demagoguery, a bill to help spur infill redevelopment and the creation of affordable housing in California, following the dismantling the state's redevelopment agencies, is advancing through the California legislature.
Do You Make Enough to Live Where You Work?
What if the people who keep a city running -- including urban planners -- can't afford to live there? An updated database highlights the gap between incomes and housing costs in hundreds of U.S. cities.
Is America Ready to Embrace the Passive House?
They sound too good to be true: houses that remain a comfortable temperature throughout the year without traditional climate control systems. Yet 30,000 such homes have been built in Europe. Why haven't passive houses caught on in the U.S.?
Walkability, But Hold the Red Tape
Urbanists must adopt less bureaucratic approaches so that the next generation can build and grow the economy, Andres Duany says. Hence the proliferation of “lean” codes that emphasize only the essentials of shaping community.
San Francisco Gains Affluence and Loses Its Identity
The latest 'digital gold rush' has been a boost for the Bay Area's high earners, but a blow to its diversity and affordability. Conspicuous transportation modes - fleets of private buses and black town cars - epitomize the area's growing divide.
Can a Dollar and a Dream Bring Back Gary, Indiana?
Just south of Chicago, the city of Gary is suffering from post-industrial blight, decaying infrastructure, and declining finances - an all too common trajectory in the Rust Belt. A program selling vacant homes for $1 hopes to stabilize neighborhoods.
Would You Live in D.C.'s 'Middle Finger' Monstrosity?
It's being called 'the Monstrosity' and a 'middle finger to taste and scale', but you'd be wrong if you called it illegal. The three story 'pop-up' a developer has added to a two-story DC rowhouse has engendered a spirited debate amid a growing city.
Foreclosures Surge in Maryland, as Second Wave of Housing Crisis Crashes
The housing crisis is alive and well in Maryland, as a second wave of foreclosures inundates the state. Though thousands of residents may be forced out of their homes, experts are confident the properties "will be snatched up quickly."
Lessons From a Model Mixed-Income Community
25 years ago, the conversion of 1950's era public housing into a mixed-income community on Columbia Point in Boston provided the template for the federal government's Hope VI program. How has this seminal project withstood the test of time?
What Would You Pay for America's Most Important Home?
When President Obama sat with real estate website Zillow for an online discussion this week, he may have been surprised to see the site turn its appraisal eye on his current home. See how much they think the 132-room mansion he occupies would fetch.
Striving for Attainable Infill Housing in Arkansas
Willow Bend is a new, nonprofit development planned for an ecologically rich, 7.6-acre infill site in the Walker Park neighborhood of Fayetteville, Arkansas. The project is envisioned as a replicable model of sustainable and attainable housing.
FREE Course: Walkable City 1: Why Walkability?
After describing his path towards focusing on walkability as the essence of good planning, Jeff Speck marches through his five principal reasons for making more walkable places.
Reinventing Malls: Planning Alchemy—Turning Gray Fields Into Gold
The course focuses on the opportunities and imperatives that shape reinvention of mall sites.
City of Rosemead
Rutgers University, Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy
One Hundred Miles
University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS)
Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY)
The Architects Foundation
City of Cambridge
The Pocatello Development Authority
The Urban Renewal Agency of the City of Pocatello
