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.
While U.S. housing stock is up 29 percent, Las Vegas stands out as the epicenter of the trend, with listings soaring 77 percent across the metro area.
Last year, San Diego pushed back against the streetlight cameras the city had installed with concerns about privacy. Now, the city has proposed ordinances for governing current and future surveillance technology.
The coronavirus pandemic has emphasized how much of Pennsylvania still lacks access to high-speed Internet. Lawmakers are making broadband access a priority and view it as an investment in the state’s well-being.
Even with the coronavirus still at large across the nation, workers continue to encourage participation in the Census. Mask-wearing, social-distance-practicing enumerators will begin surveying in Tacoma by July 23.
Over a long career, Eugene Jones Jr. has led several big-city public-housing agencies. In an interview, he discusses the federal landscape, affordable housing and political accountability.
For some towns in Maine, the only sources of Wi-Fi are the library and school. But once businesses and schools shut down to stop the spread of COVID-19, many residents were without any Internet connection.
The U.S. senator proposed legislation to invest $100 billion in high-speed broadband implementation in communities nationwide. The bill would benefit her home state, Minnesota, where 140,000 households lack connection.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot is looking past the immediate health and economic challenges to map out programs for the city's future. She has ambitious ideas about attracting wealth while also addressing racial inequities.
A scholar who's been studying the place for half a century thinks so, and it does seem to be ahead of other cities in some respects. But there also are some ways it's behind the curve.
More than 30 percent of students in Columbus, Ohio, don’t have access to broadband. But even if they have access, they may not have the tech literacy to use it, which concerns educators as the school year approaches.
Plume is the first telehealth company that is dedicated to the health of the trans community. The app offers a staff that is almost entirely trans and allows patients to communicate through text or video-chat.
For families that are high-risk for COVID-19, Arizona’s rising case numbers are cause for concern. At the same time, some medical practices are reducing the availability of telehealth as soon as the end of June.
It's transforming the worlds of real estate and development. Cities and counties can experiment with it for themselves, but their most important role is in sharing the data that drives it.
Tampa, Fla.; Kansas City, Mo.; and Los Angeles are repurposing streets for business and pedestrian use during the coronavirus pandemic. So far, the programs have been well received, and may even survive past the pandemic.
A new examination of 100 U.S. metros during the nationwide stay-at-home orders shows that small changes to societal norms, like daily commutes, could have significant impacts for air quality.
Lawmakers are withdrawing their support from the high-speed rail project as many become skeptical of the plans and costs. “I personally have lost all confidence in this group to develop and deliver what they promised.”
In the 2010 Census, nearly 9 percent of minority groups were uncounted, resulting in lost funding for communities of color. But officials and advocates are determined to ensure that doesn’t happen in the count for 2020.
In 2016 Columbus, Ohio, won a national competition to become America’s Smart City. But four years and an extension later, the city still has several projects to complete before the upcoming 2021 deadline.
White blue-collar families and their racial fears defined the urban landscape of 50 years ago, as Black Americans struggled through destabilizing change. The cities of today are very different places.
The Los Angeles Department of Transportation's collection of trip data for shared e-scooters and similar on-demand devices is being challenged as a government overreach in federal district court.
Sacramento approved a $2.5 million contract extension for the gunshot detection technology ShotSpotter. For many of the anti-police movement, the action feels like a betrayal. The mayor believes the tech can help.
The parks, trails and other outdoor amenities that make up our civic commons are crucial to building stronger, more equitable communities. Transforming them calls for a collaborative effort.
COVID-19 has transformed telemedicine into a widely utilized option for patients to receive safe health services. However, if patients don’t have computers, Internet or don’t speak English, it doesn’t work.
Once a playground for the rich and famous, Adirondack Park today relies heavily on middle-class visitors for business and sustainability. But now, uncertainty reigns, as COVID-19 puts lives and livelihoods on hold.
There's a good chance that midsize cities and smaller towns in the heartland will see renewed interest from companies looking for places that combine desirable amenities with sparser populations.
After decades of revival, they've been dealt severe blows across multiple dimensions by the coronavirus pandemic, putting them in danger of a period of extended decline.
The Census Bureau claims to have improved its ability to provide accurate data without risking the privacy of its responses, but experts are concerned there isn’t time to test the method before the data is published.
For low-income, immigrant and senior households, having at-home Internet is often too expensive. This digital divide has been highlighted as the coronavirus has shifted work and school online.
U.S. Senator Roger Wicker asked the Federal Communications Commission to accelerate the broadband funding program so that more Americans have access to the Internet during the global pandemic.
The large population of Los Angeles County makes it hard to gather representative data of confirmed COVID-19 cases. However, most officials believe that a majority of residents are still susceptible to the virus.
Absentee ballots made up 99 percent of the votes from Michigan’s May election and there were zero reports of fraud. Election officials now work to assure voters across the state that mail-in ballots are secure.
