Fearing traffic congestion, pollution and water scarcity, the city of Santa Barbara, California, enforced a population cap by preventing the construction of extra housing units. However, 40 years later, the lack of housing is proving to cause these issues more than prevent them.
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Asheville's River Arts District, North Carolina's flagship for authentic incrementalism, was destroyed by Hurricane Helene. Here's why it's so important that people continue embracing incrementalism to bring it back.
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Reforming the administration of a city's building or zoning code is just as important as reforming the code itself. Fortunately, shifting this approach is within the discretion of city staff, so they can turn an aggravating, time-consuming process into one that better serves everyone's needs.
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Some of the best arguments for historic preservation are not aesthetic or sentimental, but economic. Here are some examples of how the preservation and reuse of historic buildings can increase an area’s productivity.
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Don't be scared off by the policy changes and wonky jargon: Incremental development is fundamentally about seeing potential in your neighborhood, about observing problems and then coming up with creative ways to address them.
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Many cities are experiencing a rapid decline in their under-age-5 population, as a lack of family-sized housing forces families to leave for the suburbs. How should cities respond? One method is adopting courtyard blocks.
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Tiffany Elder is a licensed general contractor, realtor and real estate investor/developer in Durham, North Carolina. She joins this episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution to discuss her career path, how her various roles intersect, and the challenges and opportunities she’s faced.
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In this episode of Upzoned, host Abby Newsham is joined by small-scale developers Alli Quinlan and Bernice Radle to discuss their experiences as advice as incremental developers.
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Land use reform is gaining momentum and laws are evolving rapidly across North America. Here are some changes that are likely coming in the future and what impacts they might have.
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The Federal Reserve just cut interest rates. Some people are celebrating the move as making housing more attainable, but it's really just reinforcing the housing trap. Need proof? Look no further than the 40-year mortgage.
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Jennifer Krouse is a real estate strategist and the CEO of an architectural publishing house. She returns to the podcast today to dive deeper into municipal productivity, social capital and municipal investment strategies.
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Detroiters seem to be leading a reclamation of vacant homes since the Covid-19 pandemic. Here are some possible reasons for this resurgence in local homeownership.
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In this special collaborative episode, Upzoned host Abby Newsham and The Messy City Podcast host Kevin Klinkenberg discuss small-scale development with Jim Heid, a developer and author from California.
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The reign of the yellow school bus is officially over, as the majority of students get to school by private vehicles and schools cut their bussing programs. How did this shift happen? And should we really mourn the bus?
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One major consequence of the housing crisis is increased rates of homelessness. Real estate development and design experts in Tennessee are responding by designing multiunit housing prototypes that blend in with existing neighborhoods.
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Since enacting broad housing reforms in 2019, Durham, North Carolina, has been experiencing an explosion of missing-middle housing and housing affordability. Here are the main reforms the city enacted and how they're helping it fight the housing crisis.
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In this special episode of the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck talks about the ways housing fraud manifests, how it gradually saturates the market and how it’s connected to the current housing crisis.
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Jane Jacobs identified four key ingredients for good urban settings: compact development, varied buildings, mixed uses and short blocks. Here's why these ingredients are important and how certain regions in the U.S. might face more difficulty in implementing them than others.
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Jennifer Krouse is a real estate strategist and the CEO of an architectural publishing house. She joins the podcast today to talk about the ways stock plans make incremental development easier and less risky, the art of placecraft, and the importance of places being productive.
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The practice of "grandfathering in" old buildings — letting them exist without meeting current building codes — is a good one. However, buildings lose this protected status if their owners perform renovations or additions, resulting in many buildings declining or sitting empty. It doesn't have to be this way.
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