Utah, like many places, has an affordable housing crisis. These 5 strategies can deliver solutions…for Utah and beyond.
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Making housing affordable is not the same thing as creating affordable housing.
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High school students are learning about Strong Towns concepts at an innovative program in Atlanta.
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Vacancy rates are a crucial piece of bottom-up feedback. They can tell us when the housing ecosystem is out of equilibrium. But there are larger questions they can’t answer.
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As the housing crisis grows more severe, cities are looking outside the box for solutions. Case in point, a program in Israel that became a significant source of new housing, almost by accident.
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The federal government wants to help convert repurpose empty commercial space into apartments. Is this a plan that helps solves two problems at once — the affordable housing crisis, and repurposing the malls that now stand empty in our cities — or a bad idea?
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The best approaches to affordable housing solve other problems at the same time. This and other lessons from “the Michael Jordan of urban planners.”
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Affordable housing shortages in California (and other states) are worsened by a go-big-or-go-home model of development: we throw up so many barriers in the face of incremental change that the only building projects that remain viable are huge, complicated ones with many possible points of failure.
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California recently passed a bill that is supposed to help tenants facing soaring rents. Here’s how it could have the opposite effect—not only hurting renters but making the state’s housing crisis even worse.
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Lexington, Kentucky recently proposed an ordinance that would allow accessory dwelling units. Nolan Gray explains how ADUs are good for renters, good for homeowners, and good for the city — and why Lexington’s ordinance is (almost) perfect.
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Mid-size regions like Kansas City don’t have the affordability struggles of, say, a fast-growing Denver or Seattle: they have their own unique challenges instead. Here’s how the “natural” affordability of homes in these places can be turned into an opportunity for an urban renaissance.
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Google wants to dedicate $1 billion to creating housing in the San Francisco Bay Area. This is a big enough number to make a real dent, but will it help tackle the systemic issues driving the region’s housing crisis?
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The newer generation of public housing projects offer a superficially pleasant facsimile of a New Urbanist neighborhood. But these are places built all at once, to a finished state, and deeply dependent on fragile institutional arrangements.
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Incremental development doesn’t mean slow development. Here’s how big places that need housing fast can get there using the Strong Towns approach.
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"Developers in my city are only building luxury housing. They're not building anything that ordinary people can afford." If you’ve said this lately, or heard someone else say it, here are five possible reasons why.
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A proposed bill in Washington State would require cities to allow a minimum housing density near transit stations. It is a well-intentioned response to a very real problem, but its one-size-fits-all nature risks unintended consequences.
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A pilot project in Denver aims to help low-income homeowners add accessory dwelling units to their property. If it succeeds, it will help people remain in their communities, build wealth, and deliver affordable homes to a new generation of neighbors.
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Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) are a quintessentially Strong Towns approach to urban growth and affordability issues: bottom-up, decentralized, incremental, scalable and adaptable. Unfortunately, a litany of restrictions often makes them an unappealing option even where allowed.
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Perhaps we should spend more time trying to understand and appreciate the humble, marginally better neighborhoods that are already tucked away in our cities. Here’s one such neighborhood in Lexington, Kentucky.
Read More"Developers in my city are only building luxury housing. They're not building anything that ordinary people can afford." If you’ve said this lately, or heard someone else say it, here are five possible reasons why.
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