Making Commercial Areas Walkable & Livable Will Require A Lot More Than New Zoning
If affordable housing were simply a question of cost, people would be moving to Omak and other cheap and remote areas of the state. But ...
A Tale of Two Skylines: Why Downtown Vancouver Has So Much More Housing Than Seattle
I recently wrote an article in "Post Alley", a Seattle publication, about this. Here are the summary points: 1. Relative to its metro population, Vancouver ...
In Central Vancouver, Housing Overtakes Jobs
I'm just spent several days there, where everywhere we went there were people walking, even at 11 on a Sunday night. When Americans see the ...
Within 3 Years, Apartment Defaults May Outpace Office
That's the conclusion of a Bloomberg Business article citing statistics from the Fed; Trepp, MSCI Real Assets, Fitch, and other companies that track real estate ...
All-In Urban Car Costs Now $1,000/Month
Recent estimates put the cost of owning, insuring and operating a car at $10,000 per year or $833 per month. That doesn't include garaging the ...
The Country’s Biggest Examples of Failed and Successful Corridor Redevelopment
With all the communities around the country trying to build more housing, especially in commercial corridors, it's useful to see where this has already been ...
Four Key Factors in Montana’s Success at Providing More Housing:
1. Diverse interests all at the table. 2. Open debate. (Tradeoff analysis). 3. Stated dissent (so solutions are not overly-compromised). 4. A short stop on ...
How Do We Kill Off Bad Retail and Replace It With Housing?
It's not often you see a combination of tenants this close to the bottom. This is a photo from Wheaton Way, an ailing commercial strip ...
Let’s Build Housing Under Freeway Ramps
Walking in Portland this week, I was struck by how much vacant land there is under the I-405 freeway immediately adjacent to the Pearl District, ...
The Real Problem Is the Ineffectiveness of Planning
In my neighborhood on South Bainbridge Island, neighbors are already organizing to fight state-mandated infill, and they are right to be fearful of new plans. ...