Planning

The Palisades and Eaton fires represent thousands of personal tragedies, but they also constitute a collective disaster, adding new housing shortages to California’s already massive shortfall  read more »

Los Angeles city and regional planners are just as responsible for the Palisades, Eaton, and other fires that have burned in the past few days as if they had poured gasoline on the homes and lit the matches.  read more »

From the start, California’s “landmark” climate law recognized that because global warming is a planetary wide phenomena , the state could only have “far-reaching” effects by “encouraging other states, the federal government, and other countries to act.” To achieve this goal, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and leaders, charged with crafting climate policy, could have chosen to preserve the state’s quality of life – the “California Dream” – while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving climate resiliency.  read more »

The nation’s public transit systems carried 77.3 percent as many riders in October 2024 as in the same month of 2019  read more »

Throughout the West, particularly the Anglosphere, housing costs are ravaging the middle class. Homeownership, long the key to social mobility, is on the decline  read more »

This paper, by property expert Ross Elliott, explores the reasons behind our current housing shortages and identifies a range of policy measures which have contributed to – rather than alleviated – the magnitude of the current housing ‘crisis.’  read more »

I’ve written a lot about how growing up in Detroit was instrumental in my desire to improve and revitalize cities. Watching a city being hollowed out and disgraced in the ‘70s and ‘80s can have that impact.  read more »

Just a quick note on an encouraging article by James Rodriguez of Business Insider. Rodriguez reports a significant reduction in house prices in Austin, Texas, due to building a large number of single-family homes and apartments. I was unable to discern whether the article dealt with the Austin market (the metropolitan area) or the city (which is a housing submarket). Nor could I tell if his insightful comparison to San Francisco was the housing market (metro) or the city submarket.  read more »

In 1873, as a result of the Homestead Act, my great-great-great grandfather, of French-Canadian descent, was awarded 160 acres of land in Leelanau County, Michigan for military service in the Civil War.  read more »

First I want to thank everyone for reading, sharing and commenting on my recent post on talent, ambition and culture in the Midwest.  read more »