Urban Issues

One of the often-used arguments from advocates for increasing housing supply in our nation's most expensive cities is that zoning policy, or the regulation of land use by local government, has kept an artificially low ceiling on housing development  read more »

This new report examines the housing crisis in California and strategies to create more housing at affordable price points. Below is a summary and a link to download the full report  read more »

With federal approval of New York’s environmental assessment, most of the federal, state, and local obstacles to New York City’s cordon pricing plan — which almost everyone erroneously calls a congestion pricing plan  read more »

Driven, at least in part, by the huge increase in the potential for remote work, US residents moved in large numbers to states with lower urban densities  read more »

I try hard to give people insights into trends affecting our world. One of them is the way that declining birth rates will ultimately translate into shrinking cities.  read more »

With office districts and tower blocks losing their lustre, we need to rethink what cities are for. It’s time to create better neighbourhoods where people will want to spend their time.  read more »

The state of California Department of Finance (DOF) has issued interim population projections indicating that in 2060, there will be 39,508,000 residents in the state.  read more »

I often check in on NewGeography.com, a website led by southern California-based urban studies professor and famed suburbanist Joel Kotkin.  read more »

At the June meeting of the Legislature’s Joint Transportation Committee a consultant presented a review of Ultra High-Speed Rail studies that have been done for the I-5 corridor. As is often the case, most of the findings were couched in language crafted to avoid offending anyone and included many caveats about data availability and assumptions that need to be further refined. Despite that, the findings cast doubt on the feasibility of the proposal. Key findings include:  read more »

So The Los Angeles Times ran a story today all about possible “congestion pricing” schemes coming soon to certain roads in the LA area soon.  read more »