Zoning
Land use was a deciding factor in May when long-time Philadelphia City Councilmember Jannie Blackwell lost in a May primary election. Now, in a final month in office, Blackwell proposes the changes that some community members were waiting for.
WHYY
The end of single-family zoning, a key component of a comprehensive plan adopted last year in Minneapolis, has now been set in code.
StarTribune
Planned manufacturing districts (PMDs) are a way to protect valuable land, but their effectiveness as an economic development strategy has been inconsistent.
WBEZ
It seems like a tiny homes would be a good fit for such a small lot as this example in East Vancouver. But this lot is too tiny for even a tiny home.
Vancouver Sun
Gentrification "mutates particular neighborhoods" while scarce housing "squeezes entire regions," Devin Michelle Bunten writes. Conflating the two can lead to inaccuracies in understanding.
CityLab
The worlds of baseball and zoning collide again.
Greater Greater Washington
"Segregation by Design" is a new film available to the public on Vimeo.
Greater Greater Washington
The Boston Globe reports on reasons to suspect more conflicts of interest than there appears on the Boston Zoning Board of Appeal.
The Boston Globe
The corridor along University Way is currently exempt from the wave of upzoning implemented by the city's Mandatory Housing Affordability program, but that exemption is only temporary.
The Urbanist
For Montgomery County in Maryland, accessory dwelling units are a viable strategy to help ease the affordable housing crisis.
Greater Greater Washington
Residential zoning has long been considered a local issue, but some presidential candidates have started weighing in on zoning and housing. Journalists, pundits, and researchers have plenty of complexity to examine as the debate changes venue.
KCRW
A proposal to dissolve the groups has led to a debate about their purpose and who really benefits from them.
Oregon Live
A study from the Boston Foundation shows that besides homelessness and housing costs, Massachusetts housing debt also fuels the racial wealth gap and segregation.
The Boston Globe
By designating that "family" refer to a specific set of ties, many zoning codes make it difficult for "functional" families without those ties to find a place to live.
CityLab
Seattle is the latest in a series of cities, states, and counties to alter the landscape of land use regulation by approving what the Sightline Institute describes as the "most progressive" ADU policy in the United States.
Sightline Institute
A quarter of all Massachusetts renters spend more than half their income on rent. A report from the Smart Growth Alliance argues NIMBYism is partly to blame.
CityLab
There isn't much city in most U.S. cities.
The New York Times
A thought experiment compares the carbon impact of three new single family homes with the same block if it contained a duplex, a triplex, and a fourplex.
Sightline Institute
Acknowledging anti-development sentiments currently simmering at an "all-time high," New York's planning director Marisa Lago defended de Blasio administration policies like mandatory inclusionary housing.
Crain's Business New York
New analysis explores every city and suburb in the Boston region to reveal the tools of multi-family housing obstruction—sometimes it takes more than zoning to block apartments from getting built.
The Boston Globe
