Debates
Blog post
The geography for the coronavirus has changed, but most of the debate about the future of cities continues along many of the same lines as in the early months of the pandemic.
Facing the potential for accessory dwelling units to win swift legalization in Chicago inspires one columnist to push back.
Chicago Tribune
A New York Times editorial presents a resoundingly pro-urban call to action regarding the future of planning and investment.
The New York Times
Several recent studies add fuel to the fire of whether market-rate housing helps affordability or drives low-income people from their neighborhoods.
The New York Times
Eric Jaffe, writing for Sidewalk Labs, details a recent issue of the Journal of the American Planning Association that debated the future of single-family zoning.
Sidewalk Talk
As the High Line turns ten, a debate about the costs and benefits of urban revitalization continues.
Architect
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
