Debates
A retired city planner takes a position against "lot splitting," or allowing more than one unit on properties zones for single-family residential as it's known in Toronto.
The Star
Feature
The Democratic Party will hold a two-day debate event, starting tonight. It's time to brush up on the positions of the leading candidates on policies and politics relate to housing, climate change, and infrastructure.
Is the gritty, diverse New York of yesteryear dying, vanishing, or otherwise ceasing to exist? Depends on who you ask and where you look.
Harper's
Here's another entry in the ongoing debate over which public transit mode reigns supreme.
YouTube
California State Senator Scott Wiener made a big splash this month by announcing a package of pro-development bills, and now interest groups are taking sides in a heated debate over housing and density.
San Francisco Chronicle
Surveying the public discussion for answers about how to make sense of placemaking.
Arch Daily
Blog post
The Confederate monuments debate invites a broader interdisciplinary conversation about the nature and planning of public commemorative landscapes and, by extension, the identity and soul of a community.
There are two fundamental flaws with the emergent "YIMBY" approach to planning and development politics, according to this article in an influential magazine of the American left.
Jacobin
The New York Times opinion section includes a call for society, politicians, and business leaders to recognize the importance of maintenance.
The New York Times
The argument in the headline, put more specifically: inclusionary zoning, fees, legal challenges, and minimum apartment sizes are counter-productive. The only policy that will add housing stock, is to make it much cheaper to add housing stock.
Sightline Institute
Buffalo is considering policies to support affordable rental housing as demand rises. While inclusionary zoning is controversial everywhere, specific questions about the policy's effectiveness arise in cities with little to no population growth.
The Buffalo News
Yes, planners have expertise to share, but according to this rather pointed critique, they also sometimes forget that other people do too.
CityLimits.org
Blog post
There’s very little that differentiates proposals by four distinguished planning and design firms to better connect my university to its immediate neighborhood and the wider city. Why is that, and does it have to be that way?
A proposed affordable housing development fee has inspired a debate about how far developments fees can go in generating funds for affordable housing before they finally stop development altogether.
KPCC
The team at Strong Towns is taking an in-depth look at Amazon, with a week of events, including the point-counterpoint series shared here.
Strong Towns
There are lots of arguments available for people that want to oppose new housing projects, but what are a few guiding principles for framing a supportive and constructive housing conversation?
Sightline Institute
Architects and planners have to work together, as everyone on both sides of the equation knows. Even though the fields often speak the same language, there still seem to be many moments and ideas lost in translation.
San Francisco Chronicle
Devolution—or the end of federal funding for local or regional transit projects—is back on the table, thanks to the Trump Administration. Articles in two prominent media outlets debate the idea.
The Overhead Wire
No cities are entirely urban, or even similar from one neighborhood to the next. The Corner Side Yard has some fun thinking about which Chicago neighborhoods we "Chicago in Name Only" and which of its suburbs are "Suburbs in Name Only."
The Corner Side Yard
A satirical New Yorker article nails the perpetual debate between New York and Los Angeles.
The New Yorker
