Recent Streetsblog USA posts about Urban Planning

A Modest Proposal: Ask Developers to Help Pay For Better Transport

By Elana Schor | Feb 2, 2010 | No Comments

At today’s debate on conservative support for transit, developer Chris Leinberger had a modest proposal for lawmakers who are desperately seeking new transportation financing strategies in an era of diminishing gas tax returns: Ask real-estate developers to pay for projects that will increase their profits. Chris Leinberger at last year’s Walk21 conference. (Photo: M. Katz) […]

The Urbanist Case Against Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

By Elana Schor | Jan 29, 2010 | 2 Comments

The Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), an advocacy group working to reform local development practices, is seizing on House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank’s (D-MA) recent call for a new system of housing finance to replace government-controlled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Mixed-use developments, such as Atlanta’s Atlantic Station (above), are often incompatible […]

Obama Previews His New Budget’s Urban Policy Moves

By Elana Schor | Jan 22, 2010 | No Comments

When it comes to re-centering the Washington bureaucracy to better accommodate cities’ needs, the first year of the Obama administration has brought its share of progress (a three-agency partnership set to spend $150 million on sustainable development) and hiccups (a White House urban affairs office with lots of talk but little action). (Photo: whitehouse via […]

What if America’s Urban Economies Were National Ones?

By Elana Schor | Jan 21, 2010 | 6 Comments

The U.S. Conference of Mayors released a report this week with some dire conclusions for the nation’s cities: Even the payroll growth that many prognosticators anticipate this year won’t make a dent in double-digit urban unemployment. Half of the 363 biggest metro areas won’t return to their pre-recession jobs levels until 2013 or beyond. (Chart: […]

How Will Obama’s Sustainability Team Spend Its $150M? A Preview

By Elana Schor | Jan 21, 2010 | No Comments

Before the U.S. DOT gave some early clues as to how the agency would craft its new transit funding rules, deputy housing and urban development (HUD) secretary Ron Sims answered another question that’s been on the minds of transit and local-planning wonks: How will the Obama administration’s three-agency partnership for sustainable communities spend its $150 […]

A Common Thread in the Home Buyer’s Tax Credit and ‘Cash for Clunkers’

By Elana Schor | Jan 20, 2010 | 1 Comment

Back in the days of "cash for clunkers," which saw the Obama administration send nearly $3 billion in taxpayer-funded rebates to boost the sagging auto industry, our Ryan Avent and several other economics wonks pointed out an inconvenient fact: Many participants in the program would have bought cars anyway, and the rebates only pulled their […]

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