Planetizen Newswire
Keep up with essential planning news and commentary, delivered to your inbox every Monday and Thursday.
Economic Opportunity
Eight experts produce a "manifesto for a new suburbia."
Curbed
A survey of land use policies in cities and counties of California is designed to inform a more complete understanding of the housing market, sustainability, and economic mobility in the state.
UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design
Down to the level of individual census tracts, a team of researchers has developed national maps showing where upward mobility is probable, and where it isn't.
The New York Times
Transport policy reforms help achieve many Sustainable Development Goals, including poverty reduction; access to healthcare, education, employment, and clean water; gender equality; better settlements; energy conservation; and emission reductions.
Partnership on Sustainable Low Carbon Transport
Fishermen, former loggers, and conservationists are just some of the groups with a stake in whether a mining operation takes root in Washington state.
Northwest Public Radio
Blog post
Motor vehicles are expensive to own and operate. Many lower-income households spend more on transportation than they can afford due to a lack of affordable mobility options. The solution is more multimodal planning.
Blog post
Gentrification—more wealthy people moving into lower-income communities—often faces opposition, sometimes for the wrong reasons. It is important to consider all benefits and costs when formulating urban development policies.
Blog post
Many households spend more than they can afford on housing and transportation, but the latest International Housing Affordability Survey is wrong to recommend sprawl as the best solution. Real solutions must reduce both housing and transport costs.
Eight Chicago universities have agreed to engage with the city and local communities as they invest in their neighborhoods. The hope is to increase opportunities for employment and economic growth.
Urban Institute
Blog post
Smart Growth critic Wendell Cox recently endorsed White House Economic Advisor Jason Furman's criticisms of zoning codes that limit infill development, essentially endorsing Smart Growth policy reforms.
Blog post
The Center for Opportunity Urbanism has a wonderful goal—to improve economic opportunities for working class households—but uses terrible research to reach confusing recommendations about which policies are best. Please do better!
According to Brookings, this research is intended to inform local debates over the minimum wage. Drawing on Census data, the report finds that astronomical income gains are still concentrated among the biggest cities.
Brookings Institution
A new blog post from Jonathan Rothwell discusses the impact of neighborhoods on upward mobility.
Brookings Institution
Recent data shows that workers need cars to access jobs and economic opportunity. What can planners do to expand access to jobs via other alternative modes of transportation?
Brookings: The Avenue
The skills and location data of over 175 million LinkedIn members were mined to produce a map displaying the industries most common in major cities throughout the United States and Europe.
LinkedIn Blog
Richard Reeves explains the factors that limit or assist social mobility for people born into the lowest economic quintile in American society.
Brookings Institution
Blog post
A recent paper by Harvard economists Daniel Shoag and Peter Ganong titled, Why Has Regional Convergence in the U.S. Stopped? indicates that land development regulations tend to increase housing costs, which contributes to inequality by excluding lower-income households from more economically productive urban regions. Does this means that planners are guilty of increasing income inequality?
Blog post
I spent last week at the Asian Development Bank (ADB) headquarters in Manila, in the Philippines, where we are starting on an exciting but humbling project: developing a more comprehensive framework for transport project evaluation. Among other factors, this project will develop better methods for incorporating social equity impacts into transport planning. This is important in any community, and particularly in developing countries where many people are extremely poor. What transport policies and planning practices respond to their needs?
