Planetizen Newswire
Keep up with essential planning news and commentary, delivered to your inbox every Monday and Thursday.
YIMBYs
As a response to rising rental prices and low vacancy rates, Vancouver planners have created a package of zoning and process changes to provide incentives for new multi-family developments.
The Vancouver Sun
Recent political interest in local land use regulations requires a thorough and nuanced understanding of the strengths and limitations of the methodologies available for measuring the effects of zoning.
Brookings
For years, the California legislators have been passing bills to allow accessory dwelling units on single-family residential lots. These laws haven't attracted the same attention as other failed laws, but their effect is significant.
Los Angeles Times
Denny Zane reminds policymakers that local, community-focused decision making truly trumps the 'top-down, one-size-fits-all' legislative approach to housing.
The Planning Report
The City Council of Durham, North Carolina has approved changes to the city's master plan, first approved in 2005, to allow new forms of density in residential neighborhoods proximate to the city's downtown urban core.
News & Observer
A new paper published by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University raises the stakes of the discussion about exclusionary zoning and its role in the ongoing housing affordability crisis in the United States.
Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University
Details of the "Sue the Suburbs" movement wielding a new legal tool to counteract the traditionally obstructionist methods of land use regulation in California.
The Mercury News
Developers can be our friends, according to this article, as they have been before.
The New York Times
The Renaissance Revival building that houses New York City's beloved Strand Bookstore is under consideration by the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission. The case has provoked debate between rival advocates.
Pacific Standard
A couple of questions are fundamental to the debate about the housing affordability crisis.
Urban Institute
New efforts by the Trump administration to potentially curtail local land use regulations require closer examination.
The New York Times
President Trump is scheduled to sign an executive order today that will create a federal-level group to study the obstructionist practices of local governments and the potential for a federal response.
The Wall Street Journal
U.S. Senator Todd Young (R-Indiana) has introduced a new law that picks sides in the housing debate, though the law is unlikely to produce structural change in the development process the near future.
Senator Todd Young
The Editorial Board of the New York Times offers perhaps the highest profile support to date for overthrowing the status quo of slow growth and development opposition.
The New York Times
The New York City Department of City Planning is expected, very soon, to release a rezoning proposal for the neighborhoods of SoHo and NoHo in New York City.
Medium
Upzoning without addressing speculation and finance could exacerbate the housing crisis for the nation’s most vulnerable communities, a professor of urban planning warns.
The Planning Report
"This particular solution, which has been very controversial in the Legislature, is not very controversial when it comes to the general public."
Los Angeles Times
Washington's House Bill 1923 is one of a number of bills under consideration this year on the West Coast that attempts to leverage the power of the state for the sake of new development.
The Urbanist
Senate Bill 50, the closely watched upzoning bill proposed by State Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), made it a lot further through the Legislature than the prior attempt, SB 827. Still, SB 50 will short of the finish line in 2019.
Curbed San Francisco
Few in Los Angeles have the opinion that the lack of housing supply is driving the homeless crisis in the city and around the state.
Shelterforce
