Cities can be open to change and open to new residents, in whatever configuration suits them best. Or they can be closed, choosing to serve their own and hope that other people will find refuge in other places. Neither position bears on a city’s attitude towards peace and love–just on the number who can be loved.
The YIMBY-NIMBY Debate Gets ‘Uninteresting’
Labels like “YIMBY” and “NIMBY” may be crude—but so what? One of them wants to solve America’s housing crises. The other does not. Un-housed and under-housed people cannot wait for a perfect ideology to come along.
CP&DR’s Top Stories Of 2021
What is it about duplexes that make them such a popular topic? And why did only one CEQA case make the top five legal stories of the year?
The Top Urban Planning Books of 2021
Planetizen’s annual list of the top urban planning books of the year is here—maintaining a tradition that dates back to 2002.
Are Market-Rate Units Unwelcome In San Francisco?
San Francisco has become equally famous for rejecting projects, including, recently, everything from a branch of a locally beloved burrito restaurant to a 13-story, 316-unit building in the Tenderloin. The apartment building, at 469 Stevenson, met the same fate—for now—on a 8-3 vote in late October.
Housing Developers Look To Retail and Office Locations
One trend that is not new at all is California’s housing crisis. If anything, it only got worse during the pandemic. Now, cities, developers, and lawmakers are trying to figure out whether these three crises might have a common solution: Can excess office and retail space be used for housing?
Housing Developers Look To Retail and Office Locations
The pandemic accelerated the “retail apocalypse,” rendering storefronts and mall spaces vacant. And that raises the question of what will happen to all that excess retail space.
Will SB 9 and SB 10 Make Any Difference?
Many of the state’s housing advocates are overjoyed at the imminent adoption of Senate Bills 9 and 10, which passed both houses of the legislature in the past week and now await the signature of an apparently willing Gov. Newsom
ABAG Grapples With RHNA Appeals
ABAG has received 28 appeals from 24 cities and three counties
Summer Book Roundup, 2021
California always offers ripe inspiration for scholarly and popular books alike. The past year or so has produced a particularly impressive crop, both in number and quality.
CapRadio Podcast: How Racism Has Shaped Interstate Highways
Josh spoke with Sacramento’s CapRadio about the nearly 30 cities nationwide that are currently discussing some form of highway removal and restoration; we learn more about how racism has shaped interstate highways.
Lancaster’s BLVD Delivers
An unlikely strip of urbanism in an unlikely place, The BLVD is a model more urban cities in California could learn from.
VOSD Podcast: Housing Is Everything for California’s Big Cities
In this bonus episode of the VOSD podcast, Andrew Keatts interviews journalist Josh Stephens about his book “The Urban Mystique” and some of the most pressing California housing issues.
Voice of S.D. Podcast: Housing Is Everything for California’s Big Cities
Voice of San Diego’s Andrew Keatts interviews journalist Josh Stephens about his book “The Urban Mystique” and some of the most pressing California housing issues.
The Plex Paradox
CP&DR to discuss exactly what combination of art and science will be required for cities to undo single-family zoning
E-Commerce Boom Leads To Warehouse Moratoriums
Amid pressure from community groups, Inland Empire cities reconsider benefits of big warehouses.