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The planned reuse of Paul Rudolph’s oft-reviled Boston Government Service Center has taken on a new direction with a housing-focused proposal from the administration of Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey. The updated plan replaced a previously announced NBBJ overhaul that would have remade both... View full entry
The latest report from UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation on the stasis of multifamily developments in California has identified existing construction defect liability laws as a barrier to enabling housing justice statewide. This issue involves the risk taken on by... View full entry
A new planned community is built on the urban design philosophy known as ‘gender mainstreaming.’ [...]
Ms. Kail acknowledges that the parameters of gender mainstreaming are in flux. Where there used to be “a focus on the everyday life of white, middle-class women and their children,” she said, over the past decade or so, a new crop of urban planners has widened the lens, just as she’s stepping out of it.
— The New York Times
Vienna (the city previously declared by the Times to be a "renters utopia") owes a tremendous thanks to Eva Kail for its apparent equity strides. Though recently retired, the urban planner touts the new Aspern Seestadt development and its "female face" as the embodiment of the movement to infuse... View full entry
City Councilmember Lincoln Restler of Brooklyn, who confirmed the news with Gothamist on Wednesday, said he plans to introduce his bill during Thursday’s stated meeting. The bill is intended to mimic current local law requiring landlords to provide tenants with heat during the winter months by requiring them to ensure tenants can cool their homes to at least 78 degrees when it is 82 degrees or warmer during the summer, Restler said. — Gothamist
Councilmember Restler, who argues that the new legislation is tantamount to requiring heating in the winter, also told the New York Times it will "save lives as we reckon with the challenges of the climate crisis." Landlords would have a maximum of four years to comply with the mandate. The... View full entry
The crisis of housing in New York City isn't going anywhere soon: The latest data from a key city agency has revealed a pronounced stalemate in the number of new apartment buildings currently planned for construction in all five boroughs. A lack of tax incentives, including the expiration of rule... View full entry
Through my research on elevators, I got a glimpse into why so little new housing is built in America and why what is built is often of such low quality and at high cost. The problem with elevators is a microcosm of the challenges of the broader construction industry — from labor to building codes to a sheer lack of political will. [...]
It’s become hard to shake the feeling that America has simply lost the capacity to build things in the real world, outside of an app.
— The New York Times
Stephen Smith, through the New York nonprofit Center for Building in North America, has been exposing variables that undermine the housing market's intricate calculus in the form of building codes, cost of labor, zoning regulations, and the construction industry. He says: "Elevators in North... View full entry
A plan from big-box giant Costco to deliver an 800-apartment mixed-use scheme designed by AO in Los Angeles is garnering some positive reviews online for its response to the city’s vexing housing crisis. SFGate.com has more on the latest attempts to tackle the emergency, which remains at the top... View full entry
A decade ago the only way to secure a bed in Sydney’s brutalist icon, the Sirius building, was a proven need and time on the social housing waitlist. Now the price of admission starts at $1.55m – for a studio apartment. [...]
Advocates who fought to save the building from the wrecking balls and from being sold see it now as the pinnacle of privatisation that failed the state’s most vulnerable.
— The Guardian
The fate of Sydney’s martyred Rocks mirrors closely that of London’s Trelick and Balfron Towers, and the future of Singapore’s once caste-busting social housing system. As of our last reporting, the brutalist landmark has (finally, and forever) been saved from the wrecking ball — only... View full entry
Even though record prices on the secondary market have heightened anxiety about the rising costs of living in Singapore, one of the world’s most expensive cities, public housing remains broadly affordable — at least for those who qualify for government subsidies to buy units.
Today, close to 80 percent of Singapore’s residents live in public housing, and about 90 percent of the units are owned on a 99-year lease.
— The New York Times
The architect of Singapore’s successful “social engineering” campaign after 1965, Liu Thai Ker, is a Malaysian-born Yale graduate and former understudy of I.M. Pei, who told the New York Times recently that he was “sad” to see the city-state’s current market dynamics affecting some of... View full entry
A new report on California’s entrenched housing crisis from the state's independent Little Hoover Commission has identified the 54-year-old California Environmental Quality Act (or CEQA) as the greatest barrier currently in the way of architects and planners looking to meet the demand for... View full entry
One major consequence of this difference in design is that the North American double-loaded corridor buildings are much worse at providing family-sized units. To illustrate the point, we’ll go through the different sized apartments one by one, and compare the floor area and design. You’ll notice that the American plans have significantly more floor area for the same number of bedrooms, and have much more lightless interior space up against the common corridor to fill. — Center for Building in North America
Stephen Smith is a former journalist and the Executive Director of the Brooklyn-based Center for Building in North America. His analysis of spatial challenges created by multifamily apartments and zoning conditions was featured recently in Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast. This is an adroit relaying... View full entry
New York City's recently launched Office Conversion Accelerator Program has drawn interest from 64 building owners in Manhattan as planning officials mull changes to help speed up the process intended to deliver 20,000 new units of housing by 2033. The market for conversion in Lower... View full entry
The balance of power in the market for residential conversion projects in the United States has shifted from offices to hotels for the first time, according to new statistics included in RentCafe’s latest market snapshot report for 2023. Per their analysis of Yardi Matrix data, 4,556 of the... View full entry
New research published recently by the Brookings Institution has provided details of how local government in Los Angeles can galvanize a newfound abundance of Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) through policy changes in order to combat an ongoing housing crisis currently affecting more than one... View full entry
San Francisco-based Cosmic has raised $1.5 million in funding for their micro-home product designs aimed at bringing “self-sustainable homes in California and beyond.” The company’s leading product, Cosmic ONE, is described as a “limited-edition high-quality micro-home” that... View full entry
