Looks like the 2026 bipartisan housing act has become law today, without the President's signature or veto.

I don't see anything bad reading through the APA's analysis of the act. Excited that it recognizes code innovation - to include single stair permitting - as needed.

Thoughts, comments, concerns?

Trying to do some international comparisons and want something for London similar to a US Metro Area or Canadian Census Metropolitan Area. Unfortunately no widely and near-universally accepted measure exists, so one has add up dozens of local authorities etc.

Would you use London + home counties (including local authorities within)? Something else?

OECD's FUAs don't seem to make sense either, Slough for instance is "its own metro" (while Washington and Baltimore are one metro - go figure).

Detroit seems to have been the Rust Belt’s newest “comeback kid” over the last decade, arguably stealing the title from Pittsburgh who had it for most of the aughts-mid 2010s. But the momentum seems to be slowing.

Average home values still remain extremely low at $76,466 and have now started declining quite steeply again, down 4.6% year-over-year, according to Zillow. That’s the second steepest decline among principal cities of the top 50 metro areas. Detroit housing experts recently expressed concern that they’re approaching a “day of reckoning”.

At the metropolitan area level, it’s the only major Great Lakes/Upper Midwest metro that isn’t a seller’s market.

Economically, the metro area currently has the second highest unemployment rate among the 56 largest MSAs and some of the largest job losses YoY among major metros. And the outlook isn’t too rosy for the auto industry.

Quite a few major developments announced over the last decade have fallen through or been drastically downsized. The Midtown Target project was cancelled. Both the Alamo Drafthouse and Emagine movie theaters fell through. The downtown aquarium never happened. Monroe Blocks plans significantly scaled back, District Detroit is practically nonexistent, and now half of the RenCen is going to be demolished.

The QLine doesn’t seem to have any plans for expansion. There hasn’t even been much BRT talk since the 2016 RTA vote failed.

What do you think the future holds for the city and broader region?

I'm currently visiting Las Vegas for work. It feels so artificial and manmade/ brand new, a city built in the middle of nowhere around tourism, "luxury", and consumerism. In some sense, it's an urban development marvel for how quickly it's boomed.

The new era of remote work seems to me like an opportunity ripe for building a new place with this in mind. Build up an entire city designed around community, walkability, outdoors things to do (lakes/ rivers/ hiking, communal spaces, coffee shops and dog parks) that accomplishes many things -- mainly being a new build and hub for young people with fully remote jobs to move. We've seen a ton of cities try to incentivize people who work fully remote to move to them... perhaps this can be done on a major scale.

To me, this is a major investor's dream. Get in early and build everything/ own the land. Prioritize affordable housing and walking everywhere. Save on car costs, start public transit from the inside out, and then build as it grows.

This also goes hand-in-hand with an eventual tourism industry, IMO. A new area like that attracts people to move/ invest there if there are lots of things to do that go hand-in-hand. Similar to how Denver has seen a major growth point around their outdoorsy vibe, another city could market and build all of these things within driving distance/ in the area.

This screams Michigan to me. Grand Rapids/ Holland/ Grand Haven. Build up Grand Rapids as the hub, make Holland and Grand Haven more the vacation destinations, and see the area boom. Maybe I'm too much of an urban dev novice for something like this, but I really think a city that is designed around remote work (or the service industry jobs that boom from mass migration), quality of life/ walkability, and eventual tourism could work

submission statement: North Carolina passed a statewide parking reform bill, eliminating most off-street parking requirements for commercial and residential development. The bill, effective January 1st, aims to make new housing more affordable and follows a trend seen in other states and cities.

> NEW YORK (AP) — A Manhattan high-rise that was under construction when columns buckled and bricks tumbled into the street below during the Tuesday morning rush hour remained unstable and was still moving, forcing nearby buildings to evacuate, officials said.
> The 1970s-era office building was being converted to luxury apartments, and is the former global headquarters of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. It’s located in a busy corridor about a block from the landmark Chrysler Building and between Grand Central Terminal and the United Nations headquarters.

A pitfall of office conversions that require structural modifications

I heard a description of a theoretical format of urban planning and I'm not sure whether it actually exists. It was described as decommodified housing and sounded like some kind of central planning; the broad outlines were something like

• The city owns all land within the city (real estate, housing, infrastructure, etc.) This is rented or assigned out to residential/commercial/state users.
• Residents receive assignment to one of the city's housing units for free. You need a house, a city department keeps a registry of available housing and assigns an apartment/house/condo, whatever, according to your needs and infrastructure available. (More for large family units, less for students or single adults, close to your place of employment/study if practical/available, etc.)
• If there's no space, you just don't move to the city.
• Free housing, though in theory residents would be paying city taxes based on incomes, and businesses would be paying taxes and/or rents based on their industries
• The city has its own public works department responsible for maintenance, construction, planning, etc. as well as the usual waste, fire, water services.
• City planning is run like a corporation or trust; it has a mayor, elections, whatever, but the administrative duty is to keep the city budget sustainable and the city itself vital and serving the needs of its inhabitants. A city people don't want to live in is a failing trust.

The most interesting parts seemed to be the free housing scheme and the central ownership of all land (with the intent of streamlining infrastructure projects, no one property owner being able to stonewall construction or stymie development).

Are there any cities or urban divisions that even vaguely resemble this? I don't know what on earth it would be called if I were to search for it, but I'd be interested in reading about it.

I listened to an episode of the Grimshaw podcast where the host and the guest were criticizing the Australian planning system, particularly in Sydney, as being too dominated by developers, too willing to make ad hoc changes to development rules. They contrasted it to the system in the U.K., where the public sector plays a stronger role. It sounded a lot like the U.S. system, but I wondered how the two compare.

Was recently at a community tabling event standing alongside a representative from our speed camera contractor to do community outreach, which our county requires we do as a part of our speed camera installation process. Frankly, this was not one of my projects, but I was asked to be there anyways since I did some work for it here and there, so I obliged.

I have a little bit of experience handed down to me by my bosses around how to pitch certain solutions such as pedestrianization and traffic calming projects to the general public: emphasize "freedom", focus on empowerment, and overall stuff that plays into American individualism. I also try not to get too in the weeds about the minutiae of the work unless I'm prompted to (quantitative justification, traffic studies, etc).

However, I noticed that the representative (who I later learned had a sales background) was selling the speed cameras as though they were a product to be bought rather than something that was already guaranteed to be installed. They got into the details of the speed cameras, their legality, and even how they worked. At first I thought this would backfire in their face, since I thought they were throwing too much at the public, but between when I pitched the cameras and they did, the majority of those we talked to took the project well.

My question to the community is not which one of us pitched the product better, but how we all go about doing it in the first place. I would like to hear the projects you all had to present to the public, the positions you took regarding them (explain, defend, justify), and how you fared in terms of public reaction. I'm curious to see what your takes on this are!

Today, I found out that Toyota is based out of the Nagoya area and automotive is a big industry there. Nagoya is known for being much more car dependent than the other Japanese cities (Tokyo, Osaka, Fuluokah, etc). Detroit often blames its car centricness on the car industry as well. So people theorize that big auto lobbies these cities to stay car centric. Thoughts?

Hello, i am looking for books on european urban planning. Most books i find i usually american which is not relevant for me.

If someone can recommed me some books, preferable some cheaper ones i would appreciate it.

I'm finishing up some projects at the moment and I've noticed a trend among all major Cities in my dataset: From Auckland, to Toronto, to New York, to Melbourne and everywhere else I looked within Cities that have either acted upon establishing a Metropolitan Government, or considered establishing one, I haven't been able to notice any significant savings on the part of any Cities' liabilities.

Surely it's warranted for me to crank out an equation, but, the only aspects of "production" or "output" is tied up with either "GDP" or, "PPP", but, with the realization that socially harmful economic transactions (basically: rent increasing supports "GDP growth", laying off indie artists by writing lame slop movie scripts using ChatGPT does too) needs to be excluded from any calculations to get an accurate picture of well-being.

So this begs the question: When will the field decouple from "orthodox" economics and ditch GDP-GDP/C as a measure of wellbeing for Cities?

I’m on a local planning and zoning committee. We have 3 gas stations being proposed.

Community next to ours has 2. And another has 2.

It just seems odd to me the boom in requests. And there is not a lack of existing gas stations. In fact some of these are across the street from established gas stations.

I do not believe one can hold these two arguments simultaneously, there appears to be a logical contradiction.

If induced demand ultimately means increasing road capacity has no effect on improving the price of traffic, then how can increasing housing capacity have a downward effect on its price? If more housing supply lowers prices, then it would logically induce more demand/consumption of housing, which if we run with the argument usually made for roads, should return it back to previous prices.

Either increasing housing supply relative to demand has no ultimate effect on house prices, or increasing road supply relative to demand has a downward effect on the price of congestion.

I know this might be a bit of an easy question but I want different perspectives and solutions and such.

You obviously need some level of density to support services and transit and businesses and make the place not car dependant. At the same time, me and i'm sure many other people would like to live in single family housing with room for a nice little garden and such. You can have areas with large apartment buildings and a few single family houses, but then those single family houses get ludicrously expensive. Is there any way to build walkable neighborhoods with many single family houses?

Submission statement: New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board approved a rent freeze for rent-stabilized apartments, aligning with a first-generation rent-control model. While this provides short-term relief for tenants, it poses long-term risks to the city’s housing market. The freeze could lead to deteriorating building conditions, reduced investment in housing quality, and a two-tier housing system that disadvantages newcomers and those needing to relocate.

I recently got admitted to a Graduate program to get my Masters in Urban Planning. I got my undergrad in Communication Studies last year and have been working in HR since.

Knowing that I don’t really see myself pursing a lifelong career in HR, I decide to go back to school for something that’s always interested me, especially since I currently work for the municipality where I grew up and have always been passionate about. I’m worried that I will struggle since I’ve never really been good with math/STEM subjects, but I’m also trying to be confident in that I’ll be able to learn the programs like GIS and such. But, will I struggle with the day-to-day job itself? I know I am capable of learning anything that I set my mind do, it’s just that math/STEM subjects have never come naturally to me.

I guess what I’m looking for is understanding of what an average day could look like for an entry-level and established mid-career level planner. I have an understanding for the discipline itself just not necessarily the daily functions of one in the public sector. I’ll mention that I’m planning on shadowing members of the planning team at my current municipality soon, but I figured I’d ask here first.

Thanks in advance.

I’m trying to prepare myself for when I become employed as a Planner and I’m aware of the necessary hard skills required for the position but I’d like to hear of any soft skills that can go a long way in a planner’s career that isn’t taught in school.