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[The] quintessential local issue of zoning squabbles ends up generating a national scarcity of elite college admissions slots, fueling zero-sum competition and ultimately reducing America’s ability to increase global “exports” of its best-in-class high-end higher education product. — The Washington Post
The Washington Post has a useful primer on the zoning hangnail stimying elite American higher-ed institutions from expanding their enrollment in response to societal outcries and prospective applicants' increasingly high standardized test scores. The issue dates to the mid-1990s when... View full entry
San Francisco-based transdisciplinary studio Spiegel Aihara Workshop (SAW) shared new images of an extensive home renovation project of a 1930s Spanish Revival home in the Bay Area's Marina neighborhood. Aptly named the "Wraparound House," the project was commissioned by a couple looking for... View full entry
the government is tearing up the national rule book that has been in place since the second world war to ensure the best use of land, and replacing it with three simple classifications. From now on, all land in England will be designated for either “growth”, with automatic planning permission, “renewal”, with permission subject to some basic checks, or “protection”, preserving the sacrosanct status of the green belt. — BBC
Among the drastic streamlining of the planning approval process proposed is a system of automatic approvals that privileges pattern book-style developments that make use of readymade designs similar to those already used in Bath, Belgravia and Bournville, BBC reports. View full entry
The U.S. government implemented final management plans Thursday for two national monuments in Utah that President Trump downsized. The plans ensure lands previously off-limits to energy development will be open to mining and drilling despite pending lawsuits by conservation, tribal and paleontology groups challenging the constitutionality of the president’s action — Los Angeles Times
About two years ago, President Trump cut the size of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by almost 50 percent and the Bears Ears National Monument by 85 percent. The President said the scaled back size was to reverse misuse of the Antiquities Act by previous Democratic presidents that... View full entry
The McHarg Center at the University of Pennsylvania has published a digital atlas that attempts to communicate the wide-ranging implications of both climate change and a potential Green New Deal for the United States. A color-coded breakdown of land uses across the country that includes... View full entry
Nearly everyone in Chicago is in favor of establishing the Obama library on the South Side. But now, “There’ll be more room for dissent, and more people in Chicago generally willing to speak their mind without fearing the Emanuel administration,” said Juanita Irizarry, executive director of Friends of the Parks, which has opposed the seizure of parkland. [...] Emanuel’s departure also gives hope to critics pushing for a more open process. — CityLab
In the ongoing controversy about the Obama Presidential Center's proposed site on Jackson Park, design journalist Zach Mortice writes about how critics of the library might have more opportunities to argue their case for a community benefits agreement (CBA) and transparency on the project... View full entry
Groundbreaking research presents credible estimates of the total parking supply in several American cities, and it's not pretty. Parking spaces are everywhere, but for some reason the perception persists that there’s “not enough parking.” And so cities require parking in new buildings and lavishly subsidize parking garages, without ever measuring how much parking exists or how much it’s used. — usa.streetsblog.org
A new report from Eric Scharnhorst at the Research Institute for Housing America, an arm of the Mortgage Bankers Association, estimates the total parking supply in five US cities. Looking at satellite imagery and tax record data, Scharnhorst tallied on-street parking, surface parking, and... View full entry
Visionary plans, policy, and infrastructure have all played crucial roles in the development of the city and consequently in the definition of its edge. Today, conflicting interests regarding ownership, use, and value of the Lakefront have produced a stalemate of what this civic treasure could become. — Chicago Architectural Club
A hotspot for land-use disputes, the urban development of Chicago's Lakefront is the subject of the 2016 Chicago Prize competition, "On the Edge”. Launched on November 29 by the Chicago Architectural Club and the Chicago Architecture Foundation, the competition seeks speculative architectural... View full entry
Our ability to form and maintain friendships is shaped in crucial ways by the physical spaces in which we live. [...]
in America we have settled on patterns of land use that might as well have been designed to prevent spontaneous encounters, the kind out of which rich social ties are built. [...]
We do not encounter one another in cars. We grind along together anonymously, often in misery.
— vox.com
More on the repercussions of sprawl:Urban sprawl costs the American economy more than US$1 trillion per yearThe true costs of sprawlSeven Myths About New UrbanismWhy sprawl may be bad for your health View full entry
