Search Results
-
Where Do You Go to Find Community?
Why do we love cities? For all their stresses and shortcomings, cities hold unfathomable promise for intersecting lives and friendships, experiences and cultures. In cities—big and small—we find our communities! At their best, cities are beacons of innovation and progress. But even our most prosperous cities are far from urban utopias. Economic inequality and residential segregation run rampant, excluding poor people and communities of color from sharing in the prosperity...Read more » -
End Apartment Bans to Save the Planet, UN Climate Report Says
Local bans on attached homes in cities are driving up energy use and helping cook the climate, the United Nations Environment Program wrote in a report published Tuesday. “In some locations, spatial planning prevents the construction of multifamily residences and locks in suburban forms at high social and environmental costs,” the report’s authors wrote. They suggest a 20 percent cut to average floor area per person by 2050. UN institutions...Read more » -
Our Bans on Stacked Homes Are Bans on Age-Ready Homes
If you want to understand the new housing crisis that’s looming over the Pacific Northwest like a big silver wave about to break, consider three numbers from Oregon. 616. 3,810. And 6,781. The first is the approximate number of wheelchair-ready homes the state needed to add to its housing stock in 2011 to keep up with the increase of age-related ambulatory disabilities that year. The second, six times larger, is...Read more » -
FAQ About I-5 Rose Quarter Expansion and Decongestion Pricing in Portland
-
King County Poised to Lock Out Fossil Fuels
Update: The King County Council voted 6-2 to support the moratorium. King County is poised to join the ranks of Northwest communities that are locking out coal, oil, and gas developments. Later this month, County Councilmember Dave Upthegrove will introduce legislation to prohibit major new fossil fuel infrastructure, including gas pipeline expansions. It’s the right time for King County to act. Over the last decade, Northwest communities have faced down...Read more » -
Of 60 Oregon Councils, School Boards, All but Two Underrepresent People of Color
Voters often feel their influence is more powerful at the local level than over state or federal decisions. A voter can implore their city council person to fix a pothole or change the noise ordinances and see a tangible result. A voter can elect a school board member who promises to address racial inequities in graduation rates and follows through on that promise. One local elected official can have a...Read more » -
The Books We Love Best in 2018
-
Could State-Led Upzones Happen Here? 7 Lessons from Modern Cascadia
For housing advocates, could there be a better way? As urban housing shortages drive poor people out of job-rich cities, as middle-class families risk their life savings on exurban tract housing because it’s what they can afford, and as the planet keeps ticking toward deeper climate-driven disasters, is there some path to fair, abundant, transit-friendly housing that doesn’t require battling the forces of stasis up an endless staircase of 2...Read more » -
Duplexes Are Now Legal on 99% of Vancouver’s Low-Density Lots
Three years after Seattle became one of the first modern cities to float a proposal to re-legalize duplexes citywide, its northern neighbor Vancouver has actually implemented that change. On Wednesday night, Vancouver’s council voted 7-4 to allow buildings that include two full-size homes instead of just one in virtually all of its single-family neighborhoods. As reported by the Vancouver Sun, this change to the low-density lots that cover half the...Read more » -
Vancouver’s New Plan to Allow More Homes of All Shapes and Sizes
Cascadia’s three biggest cities—Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, BC—have all flirted in recent years with loosening the stranglehold of single-family zoning, rules that ban anything but detached houses on large lots from vast swaths of city land, creating virtual walls that exclude anyone who can’t afford inherently pricey homes. As the lack of affordable housing reaches crisis levels in all three cities, officials recognize the need to allow more options in...Read more »
