Search Results
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How Portland’s Form of Government Makes It Hard to Find Parking
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Long Rotations for Cascadian Forests
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The Ambitious Housing Plans at the Center of Vancouver, BC’s, October Election
Which North American city will be the first to address its housing crisis with abundant apartments, city-wide? A growing handful of North American states and major cities have been scoring wins in the battle to undo the historic scourge of exclusionary zoning laws, notably Oregon, California, Massachusetts, Portland, Vancouver, BC, Minneapolis, and most recently, Charlotte. These are all relatively incremental changes, though. Laneway cottages here, and duplexes or quadplexes there....Read more » -
A Guide to Alaska’s November 2022 Election
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Save Anchorage from Parking Mandates
Anchorage needs parking. The city was built around cars and so almost everyone uses them, whether they want to or not. Naturally we need a place to put them. But who should have the power to decide how much parking Anchorage’s homes and businesses need? It’s a question that’s come up in cities and states across the US. City zoning codes tend to dictate how many parking spaces, say, a...Read more » -
When Cities Switch To One-Winner Council Districts, Housing Growth Plummets
A new 11th-hour idea for rewriting the rules of Portland’s city government has several possible flaws, but here’s one: statistically speaking, it’d be likely to worsen the city’s housing shortage. The proposal was publicly floated in a media interview three weeks ago by its loudest advocate, city Commissioner Mingus Mapps. Mapps’s idea, according to The Oregonian/OregonLive: to scrap the concept hammered out by a city-appointed citizen commission over the last...Read more » -
Can Anchorage Bring Back the Triplex?
There’s not much consumer choice in the Anchorage housing market. Single-detached homes, or “one-plexes,” are the norm, even though residents want more options to accommodate their different life stages and budgets. So, some of Alaska’s top architects and builders teamed up with Fairview residents in a neighborhood design contest to imagine a future inspired by historic housing norms, when cities allowed a wider array of homes in American neighborhoods. In...Read more » -
Why Do We Choose Short Rotation Forestry Over Carbon Storage, Timber Supply, and Forest Health?
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Oregon Has a Chance to Sharply Cut Urban Parking Mandates
Update, July 21: Oregon’s Land Conservation and Development Commission unanimously approved these rules on a permanent basis. The first round of parking reforms, removing mandates near transit, for smaller homes, and for regulated-affordable homes, are set to take effect Jan. 1, 2023, in the state’s eight largest metro areas. About 100 years ago, governments started redesigning cities around cars. On Thursday, Oregon could approve a major step to prioritize space...Read more » -
How Low Taxes Lead to High Home Prices in Vancouver, BC
British Columbia is a far wealthier place than it was a decade ago. It has also become a prohibitively expensive place to live for more and more working families, young people, and renters of all ages, thanks to ballooning housing prices. And those high prices are inflated by a tax system that encourages speculative investment in residential property with three key policies: low property taxes, the principal residence capital gains...Read more »