2008_09_08_bos-ord-sna_069 Originally uploaded by dsearls
Randhurst Mall in Anaheim, California Mt. Prospect, Illinois with a nearly empty parking lot. Compare the size of the building to the size of the total lot.
In many places around the United States, the construction of the enclosed shopping mall sounded the death knell for historic downtowns and small town centers, [...]
Last spring, Chris Leinberger wrote in The Atlantic that the pendulum was slowly shifting away from suburban life due to our country’s changing demographics, growing public demand for “urban” amenities like walkable neighborhoods and better transportation options, and the overbuilding of exurban housing — far from jobs and highly inconvenient when gas gets expensive.
The CEO’s for Cities study from a few months ago, “Driven to the Brink,” has gained some traction, this time in video form. YouTube’s editors picked it up last week to highlight on the main page, and as a result, it’s gotten over 120,000 plays and nearly 800 comments.
Do check it out below. From the [...]
updated 6/27: The NYT changed the previous headline from “country living” to the “far suburbs.”
Good piece today in the New York Times, surveying the scope of changing preferences for buying in the suburbs as energy prices continue rising:
Suddenly, the economics of American suburban life are under assault as skyrocketing energy prices inflate the costs of [...]
Unfortunately for the owners of either, they’re both losing value.
That’s the connection — echoed by SGA — in a Wall Street Journal piece this morning on today’s front page by Ana Campoy on gasoline consumption and miles driven trending downwards, and how it’s beginning to drastically affect Americans’ housing and transportation choices:
Meanwhile, people have begun [...]
Almost overnight, it has become the most pressing issue in the minds of most Americans. CNN’s most popular topic this week? “Fueling America.” Gas prices are now competing with Iraq, the economy at large, and even Angelina Jolie for primacy in the national consciousness. If you’re interested in the numbers, do check out Google Trends. [...]
I’m back from a weeklong vacation, so you probably already saw Paul Krugman’s wonderful column in the New York Times last week that was subsequently posted and emailed all over the place, but it’s worth posting for posterity.
In “Stranded in Suburbia,” Krugman muses on the differences in how high gas prices are devastating our economy [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
There’s a commercial airing frequently for a Dodge minivan these days. Maybe you’ve seen it:
An unhappy family sits around their very nice home, all doing their best to ignore each other. The cynical teenage daughter is on the phone, asking her friend, “Did you see what she was wearing? Eww!” The youngest boy approaches [...]
What’s in store for newly-created exurban neighborhoods like these, far from the city’s core?
Perhaps for the first time since the late 1940s, when the country emerged from depression and world war to launch the national project of settling the countryside surrounding its beleaguered cities, our culture appears to be entering a critical examination of [...]
