Archive for April, 2008

Real estate: Time to update the conventional wisdom

Tuesday, April 29th, 2008
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To the old conventional wisdom for real estate,

…you have been replaced:

You may have already read about WalkScore when we covered it last year, or seen the widget in our sidebar here on the blog. (SGA office = Walk Score 100!) It’s been a good year for Matt Lerner and the other Seattle developers who created [...]

Kunstler’s predictions in BusinessWeek

Friday, April 25th, 2008
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Author James Howard Kunstler looks at the trends we’ve been discussing for the last week — home prices in suburbs with long commutes depreciating — as well as some that we haven’t talked much about, like escalating food prices and the debilitating effect that high fuel prices are having on airline and retail industries, and [...]

“Marketplace” on the economy deterring sprawl

Friday, April 25th, 2008
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American Public Radio’s Marketplace this morning featured a very brief snippet on Growing Cooler and how the economic downturn and rising energy costs have altered the dynamics of the housing market. As the similar story on NPR showed earlier this week, markets with short commutes or in close proximity to transit and the core of [...]

Governors honored for their work in creating Institute

Thursday, April 24th, 2008
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Gov. Parris Glendening, left, and Gov. Christine Todd Whitman with their award from Partners for Livable Communities.
The Partners for Livable Communities recognized former Governors Christine Todd Whitman and Parris Glendening a few weeks ago for their work in creating the Governors’ Institute on Community Design. The PLC presented them with a Bridge Builders award [...]

Gas prices’ effect on the housing market

Thursday, April 24th, 2008
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High gas prices are squeezing the housing market on the fringes of metro regions.

It can be scary to turn on CNBC or CNNMoney these days. Watch for just a minute or two, and you’re likely to hear that not only is the housing market in trouble, but we might not be able to see the [...]

Measuring housing affordability: A test case

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008
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Last week, we mentioned the release of a new tool from the Center for Neighborhood Technology that measures the true cost of housing affordability, by also considering the transportation costs of each area. (Note: the Washington Post had a good story about the index here.) A few other outlets have done their own local test [...]

Eliminating the gas tax?

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008
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The situation: Bridges are falling down, traffic congestion is worsening, gains in fuel efficiency are reducing gas tax revenues, worthwhile transit projects are sitting on the shelf, and the Highway Trust Fund — funded by the 18.5 cents a gallon gas tax that is already inadequate for funding transportation investments — is about to run [...]

Measuring the true cost of housing: location, location, location

Thursday, April 10th, 2008
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It’s not just gas prices that make transportation expensive…
Yesterday, The Center for Neighborhood Technology, an SGA coalition member, along with the Brookings Institution, released a new web-based tool to measure housing affordability — by also measuring the transportation costs inherent in a home’s location. Traditionally, affordability is measured at 30% or less of a family’s [...]

NYC’s farsighted congestion pricing plan dead

Tuesday, April 8th, 2008
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As you may have read this morning in numerous other outlets, New York City’s plan to implement congestion pricing in Manhattan was defeated last night without reaching a vote on the floor. [NYT] The plan would have charged most cars $8 and trucks $21 to enter traffic-choked Midtown and Lower Manhattan during busy hours on [...]

But can “we” solve it without addressing where we live?

Monday, April 7th, 2008
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“We” love the “we” campaign, but it has some glaring omissions
Many of you may have seen the hopeful television commercials over the last week with pictures of windmills, solar panels, and all things “green.” Former Vice President Al Gore launched a three-year, $300-million dollar campaign last week, officially called The Alliance For Climate Protection,” but [...]

Growing Cooler: “I just wanted my life back”

Friday, April 4th, 2008
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As we’ve highlighted this week, Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change is out in its final, sharp-looking book form. Released in a preliminary technical form last fall, the book has been revised, updated, and published as a beautiful hardcover book, replete with informative graphics, pictures and illustrations.
The crux? It will be [...]

Growing Cooler book released to public

Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008
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Pass this on to your friends, colleagues and others to let them know about the release of this exciting new book! Forward this announcement with the link below to your friends and colleagues, or add it to Digg, Reddit, Google Bookmarks, and other social sites.
Visit our Growing Cooler page for more information. There, you can [...]