Housing and Urban Issues
Stresses on urban communities continue to affect housing, food security, child services, homelessness, business development and crime. Coverage includes stories about new solutions to how cities are run, how they develop as urban centers and about the people who live there.
Median home values have risen 60 percent since 2012, yet the city has 20,000 fewer housing units than before the storm, with nearly 29,000 still vacant.
The California county unanimously approved trial of a guaranteed minimum wage program. The first cohort of 125 low-income, non-white mothers will receive $1,000 monthly payments for the next two years.
Electric vehicle incentive programs, like the Clean Air Vehicle decal program, which gives access to carpool lanes, can encourage some consumers to make the switch, yet EVs are still out of reach financially for many.
Seven pedestrians were hit by trains at rail crossings and eight were hit while walking along rail tracks in New Jersey in 2020; five died. Transit officials are working to understand what’s causing the incidents.
The state has filed two lawsuits against San Diego County over two large housing projects that will put residents at extraordinary fire danger. There have been 68 fires within 5 miles of one of the planned sites.
In examining six older industrial cities, two urbanists raise a lot of good questions, though they don’t provide any definitive solutions.
Two new measures would change the way that public transportation fares are collected by establishing a $35 administrative citation and hiring safety officials, not police officers, to collect fares, answer questions.
Despite statewide efforts to establish better broadband coverage, one in six Maine households still don’t have Internet access. While officials work to expand access, progress is slow.
Almost no one disputes the need for America to repair and expand its physical infrastructure. But there’s a right way to do it, and there’s a wrong way.
Beckley, W.Va., wants to welcome remote workers to the city as a part of the downtown redevelopment plans by leveraging collaborative work spaces, affordable cost of living and other lifestyle amenities.
Even as transit authorities expect $70 million from federal COVID relief funds, the interim CEO sees no easy way to finish the final segment of rail. The project was supposed to be entirely finished by Jan. 2020.
Some cities are paving the way to getting beyond outdated governance and funding structures, creating viable alternatives to our antiquated institutions for distributing transportation resources.
The Colorado city has stated that “all options are currently on the table” to complete the long-awaited transit service from Boulder County. Officials claim the rail line proposed on the 2004 ballot is taking too long.
New Jersey is spending $190 million to revitalize Newark’s historic art deco Penn Station. One of the busiest transit hubs in the country will be restored after nearly 90 years of service.
It's true that some cities have been losing population, but it's not because of a mass exodus to escape the coronavirus. Don't look for a lot of moving vans heading from Brooklyn to Mayberry.
While officials hope to see 940,000 EVs on roads by 2030, it is estimated that 1 million drivers will need to switch to EVs to achieve the state’s greenhouse reduction goals. Currently there are 33,654 EVs on Colorado’s roads.
Many COVID vaccine websites across the nation violate disability rights laws, blocking blind people from signing up or receiving information. In at least seven states, blind residents were unable to register without assistance.
Gov. Janet Mills says the money would be spent on rural parts of the state where COVID-19 restrictions and low Internet connectivity have hurt education and the economy. Lawmakers say $30 million is good but not enough.
The City Council approved the creation of two new councils to develop a community that is able to support and encourage new businesses. Both advisory committees will begin accepting applications in March.
A new report by the Transportation Research Board points toward more seamless and coordinated connections among all forms of shared mobility, such as buses, bikes, trains, scooters and more.
A few of them have worked out well. Most of them have been failures. But the idea of building new ones has never died, and there are signs of still another incarnation.
San Fernando, Calif., will establish 14 superchargers in a city-owned parking structure near the downtown area to hopefully encourage visitors to stop into the small, largely Latino town and revitalize the area.
Slab City, a do-it-yourself, free-wheeling community, has been functioning to some degree for decades. Without any infrastructure or civic institutions, such as police or fire services, it exists by defying normalcy.
Just 18.5 percent of Iowans have access to affordable Internet and the average download speed is the second worst in the nation. But Gov. Reynolds hopes to get Iowans connected over the next three years.
Two state lawmakers proposed a bill that would require all public meetings to have Internet participation options even after in-person meetings return. The bill also suggests requiring translators to increase access.
Every neighborhood should be free of litter, debris and property- and housing-code violations. There's plenty that government can do, including helping residents understand their own role.
Recent trials show the new smartphone app, PedNav, is about 95 percent effective in communicating with traffic control systems and audio directions, and can aid the visually impaired to cross the street.
Black, Latino and Native American communities have been impacted the most by COVID-19, and yet they have the lowest rate of vaccinations in Los Angeles County. Officials are increasing efforts to fix the racial disparities.
When a development causes a problem, we should be dealing with the problem where it exists – not cordoning off whole areas of the city. Let’s scrap the old Euclidean codes and update with market urbanism zoning.
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Speakers at the recent Micromobility World conference debated the future of smart city tech and whether it’s actually been improving urban mobility, or simply facilitating a growth of the surveillance state.
