Whether we go back to work in offices or not, the commercial real estate market can’t go back to the crazy levels it was. Not without huge damage to society.
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Are spread-out suburbs safer in a pandemic than compact, walkable cities? Short answer: Yes. Does that mean suburban-style neighborhoods are “stronger” during a pandemic? Not even close. Here’s why.
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A town in South Carolina just banned all new growth. The Upzoned podcast returns with a look at the challenges facing exurbs that can’t afford the growth they worked so hard to achieve.
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The slide into municipal insolvency isn’t as fun as they made it sound. It’s time for cities to #DoTheMath.
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No, you’re not stuck in congestion because your city’s infrastructure is “inadequate” to handle growth.
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Communities are stuck in a spiral of infrastructure spending. Who will stand up and say enough is enough?
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Our own Chuck Marohn and Urban3’s Joe Minicozzi got together to deliver some tough truths about building a stronger Kansas City, Missouri. Lesson number one: Simply tweaking how you collect taxes is not going to solve your revenue problems.
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Deeply held beliefs, supported by flawed assumptions, blind us to realities and facts. The supposed wealth and prosperity generated by cut-through urban highways was always an illusion—but who will dare to point out the obvious truth?
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Maybe the one good thing you can say about municipal debt is that it’s on the balance sheets. We’re tracking it. But there is another type of future obligation that is like debt…only worse. It comes back again and again, and too many cities aren’t paying attention.
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We have to stop looking at the stagnation and decline of our blocks and neighborhoods as a normal part of the development process.
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The problem with new American suburbs isn’t a "lack of planning" or “uncontrolled growth” or “inadequate infrastructure.” The problem is a lack of basic financial solvency.
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We’ve been living for decades on the urban economic equivalent of anabolic steroids: it’s time for some good old-fashioned diet and exercise. The key is to reorient the way we approach growth. Instead of thinning out our cities and taking on more infrastructure liabilities, we need to wring real value out of the places we’ve already built.
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Tampa has an epidemic of leaking and bursting pipes. But don’t worry, the city’s taking action! …by proposing an eightfold increase in the amount it spends on maintenance for the next 20 years, half funded by new debt. How did we get to this point?
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The unproductive use of infrastructure has put most cities, even those that are superficially prosperous, in a position where they won’t be able to afford to maintain what they’ve built. The signs of this crisis are everywhere—if you’re willing to look.
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Why does infrastructure cost so much to build in the U.S.? The fundamental reasons aren’t technical. We’ve structured our postwar economy to use overspending on infrastructure as a way to induce short-term growth.
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Pine Island, MN (population 3,000) has huge dreams, yet they can’t take care of their basic systems. Who pays the price?
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How much road does your city have—and how much does it actually have the money to maintain? We compare “calories in” to “calories out” before we binge on ice cream; what if we took the same approach to our infrastructure budgets? One city did, and here’s what they found out.
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America has an excessive infrastructure problem—and perhaps nowhere is that more clear than in places like the massive, center-less city of Palm Bay, Florida.
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This Canadian city is set to get a new, $2 billion, state-of-the-art hospital. All well and good except for one thing: why do they want to build it in a rural area on the far outskirts of town?
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More than ever of what we make is produced with little thought to its durability. But what happens when we apply this mindset to the very communities we live in?
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