Next week the Cambridge City Council will consider a petition to require new or newly renovated buildings of 25,000 square feet or more to be net-zero emissions. Under the rule, any energy that buildings use beyond what they produce must be sourced from approved, renewable energy sources. While … [Read more...]
Urban-Rural Political Alliances Hurt Cities
While House Republicans have stripped food stamp benefits from the farm bill to get enough votes to pass the bill's agricultural supports, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program may be added back into the bill in conference with the Senate. The farm bill get its strength because it aligns … [Read more...]
Detroit’s art is not the key to its revival
Detroit's art assets have made news as Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr is evaluating the city's assets for a potential bankruptcy filing. Belle Isle, where Rod Lockwood recently proposed a free city-state may be on the chopping block, but according to a Detroit Free Press poll, residents are most … [Read more...]
Newest Offering from Fundrise Goes Live on Monday
On Monday, Fundrise will make their newest offering at 906 H Street NE in DC available to investors. Many real estate journalists have covered this innovative investment company's crowdsourcing strategy, with Urban Turf naming Fundrise a top real estate trend of 2012. This development is the … [Read more...]
Meetup this Saturday
This weekend Anthony Ling who writes the blog Rendering Freedom (and has previously written here) will be in DC. Stephen Smith will also be in town, and we're planning a meetup on Saturday. Anthony is an architect in São Paolo. He writes about architecture, economics, and urbanism, and I'm excited … [Read more...]
Irrelevant real estate trends
Earlier this week Wendell Cox wrote a piece at New Geography arguing that projections for increasing demand for multifamily housing relative to single family homes are incorrect. He was criticizing a study by Arthur Nelson that predicts increased demand for multifamily housing relative to … [Read more...]
Campaign season is over links
Stephen had great twitter coverage of urbanist election issues last night, but here are a few more links to significant outcomes:1. Washington state and my home state of Colorado voted to legalize marijuana possession, private use, and in Colorado limited production. Drug policy liberalization … [Read more...]
A message to journalists and academics from George Haikalis
I spoke to George Haikalis (trust me, he's a lot smarter than his HTML looks), a regional planner and former NYCTA official, about the high cost of New York City transit. He had a message to the press and academia: Part of the problem is that we don't really have a very strong independent technical … [Read more...]