Housing
Supply, Demand, and Affordable Housing
Bill Witte, president of Related California, one of the most active developers of residential and commercial properties on the West Coast, talks about real estate, affordable housing, and a squeezed middle class with The Planning Report.
Arguing for More Housing in the Silicon Valley
San Francisco Chronicle architecture critic John King criticizes the housing policy of cities like Mountain View, Silicon Valley home to companies like Google and LinkedIn.
How are California’s Bullet Train and Affordable Housing Connected?
California Gov. Brown’s support of high speed rail contrasts sharply with his gutting of affordable housing. Michael Russell, real estate developer and advisor, reviews pending bills and potential fixes for affordable housing.
A Tale of Two Markets
Re-examining recent thinking on student debt as major contributor to the lousy housing market.
Housing Policy Repair for a New Era: Let’s Review
Communities across the U.S. are increasingly frustrated at the persistence of mid-20th-century thinking about housing among local leaders even in the face of a mountain of 21st-century evidence that times have changed.
London's Airports - The Ultimate Transit Orientated Development?
London's mayor, Boris Johnson, has long favoured the creation of a new airport in the Thames Estuary over expanding Heathrow. New claims of boosting house building in west London have generated further criticism.
A Village Designed Just For People With Dementia
In the Netherlands, a radical idea is being tested: Self-contained "villages" where people with dementia shop, cook, and live together—safely.
The Future is Cities
Cities are growing faster than you can say megalopolis. But as populations around the world shift to urban areas, cities are also focal points for global challenges—water, energy, health. MIT is working to address these issues.
The U.S. City with the Highest Median Rent is....
If you guessed the Big Apple, you'd be wrong. It's the City by the Bay with a median rent of $1,463; New York City had the fifth highest at $1,187. San Jose, Boston, and Washington, D.C. were ranked second, third, and fourth respectively.
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.
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.
The case against mixed-use: not proven
A recent study suggesting that mixed-use zoning increases crime is not as persuasive as it might seem at first glance.
America's Housing Stock in Need of Triage
In rising to meet America's changing housing needs and demands, not every community is positioned to pull it off. What to do? Painful though it is, Ben Brown suggests triage.
The Not-So-Libertarian Argument For Sprawl
In the 1990s, most public argument about suburban expansion was pretty simple. Environmentalists argued that sprawl increased pollution, while their opponents responded by invoking the free market. Environmentalists and other sprawl critics (including myself) responded that sprawl is the result less of the free market than of government subsidy and regulation. Recently I have started to notice hints of a not-so-libertarian argument for sprawl: that pro-sprawl government policies such as highway construction open up real estate for development, and thus make housing affordable.
High-End Real Estate Makes Wildfires Worse
In Colorado and the West, the most desirable real estate is also the most likely to burn, writes Michael Kodas.
Homebuilders Consider What Will Get Gen Y to Buy
Teresa Burney reports on PulteGroup's new marketing services geared towards understanding the Gen Y demographic as new potential homeowners.
Baby Boomers Ponder Their Next Move
Recent studies on older generations' dwelling and travel patterns show that urban areas may provide more mobility and independence than suburban areas with less access to public transit.
Doing it Anyway: How Nonprofits are Tackling the Challenge of Scattered-Site Rentals
Scattered-site rental management is something nonprofits have long found to be a challenge. But there are ways of pulling it off, and those who have done it tell Shelterforce how, and why it’s worth it.
Does density raise prices?
In For A New Liberty, libertarian intellectual Murray Rothbard writes that leftist intellectuals had raised a variety of complaints against capitalism, and that "each of those complaints has been contradictory to one or more of their predecessors.” In the 1930s, leftists argued that capitalism was prone to ‘eternal stagnation”, while in the 1960s, they argued that capitalist economies had “grown too much” causing “excessive affluence” and exhaustion of the world’s resources. And so on.
Is Housing a Human Right?
Advocates around the country, and around the world, think so, and they're making their case from Southern California to Scotland and South Africa.
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 Thousand Oaks
City of Wisconsin Rapids
Harvard University Graduate School of Design
The Architects Foundation
University of Cincinnati Online
Northern Illinois Transit Authority (NITA)
The Pocatello Development Authority
The Urban Renewal Agency of the City of Pocatello
