I love to see this as I think the financing is probably the part that is most often missed in addition to zoning, parking, etc.

A construction loan is one thing, but any kind of rehab, I feel like most lenders are not going to be very into that, so it's largely cash out of pocket, etc. And if you do a teardown, I think a construction loan for a McMansion is probably more of a sure thing than a multifamily project assuming it's permitted.

Just in this high interest rate environment, we need innovative loan programs for those willing to take some risk.

Just some pics of a Sunday avo Bike Rave in Hobart, Tasmania. Great to see community support for safer streets and bike lanes!!!

Washington DC has done this with some success. Would love to see more cities at least try it and the suburban counties who need to add affordable.

Hi everyone! 👋

I’m a Level 6 university Product Design student currently researching how people experience nature and biodiversity in urban environments. I’m looking to understand how people interact with nature in their everyday lives, how it affects their wellbeing, and what might help them feel more connected to the natural world.

I’ve created a short survey and would really appreciate it if you could spare a few minutes to complete it. Your responses will help inform my university design project. All experiences and perspectives are welcome. Thank you for your time!

Tackling the disconnect between humans and urban bidiversity – Fill in form

Title reads “Voters here will decide whether to force cities to build cheaper, smaller homes”. It’s strange for the title to carry a negative connotation for a proposal that relaxes restriction on housing lot size in the state of Massachusetts. Most single family house zoning in the state currently require at least an acre of land(40,000 square feet), and the proposal would allow the minimum lot size to be as small as 5000 square feet, to allow more affordable homes to be built. The current law is the one that forces people to build on unreasonably large lots, raising cost in building both the houses and the infrastructure that is needed to support those houses. 5000 square feet is still way too big, but at least it is a step in the right direction.

This new building is right in front of a bustop and they built benches *into the building* for commuters. The opposite of hostile architecture. I love it.

A lot of discussions about car dependency focus on urban planning, public transport, and individual choices. But how much responsibility do you think the automotive industry itself has? Any thoughts?

I posted this in the skyscrapers subreddit to get their opinion. Based on my opinion and the comments the answers were:

1900s- Paris or Vienna

1910s - Berlin

1920s/30s - NYC/Chicago

1940s - Mexico City or DC

1950s - Los Angeles

1960s - London or Brasilia or Montreal

1970s - Hong Kong or Houston or São Paulo

1980s - Tokyo or Hong Kong

1990s - Tokyo

2000s - Shanghai

2010s - Singapore or Dubai

2020s - Shenzhen and Chongqing

Do you agree or have other answers?

What if the San Francisco Bay Area had consolidated into one NYC style city like New York City did in 1898, when New York (Manhattan) absorbed Brooklyn and other neighboring areas to form the modern City of New York. Instead of San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Daly City etc. and the Peninsula developing separately, imagine an early or mid 20th century amalgamation or merger into a single “City of San Francisco” where transit, zoning and infrastructure are unified across the Bay.

You end up with San Francisco as the downtown core, Oakland as a secondary CBD and port hub, Berkeley as the academic center, and the Peninsula as a continuous tech corridor feeding into Silicon Valley.

Would this kind of consolidation have produced a true west coast equivalent to New York City?

This piece applies urbanist principles to America's rural communities to show how many of the mistakes that plague our cities were also replicated in the countryside, describing how different population segments are harmed by these choices. It also explores, through a case study in Iowa, some opportunities for car-free and walkable lifestyles that can be generated from the distinct developmental histories and geographies that many small towns possess, taking advantage of the fact that many rural main streets were spared the urban "renewal" policies of midcentury. Overall, the article looks for ways to diversify the kinds of lives rural people can lead that accommodate rural America's distinct geographic and financial challenges.

This is a story about something that's happening in my backyard in DC. It's got all the urbanist themes: thwarted YIMBY's, handing more than a billion dollars of taxpayer funds over to a professional sports team, the poor ROI on football stadiums, an unwillingness to invest in public transportation, and a city catering primarily to the needs of suburban drivers.

I put together a video about how legal research and a 2002 ballot measure got this park developed in Alameda, California. I think it's an often overlooked story because it's a smaller city and the park opened in 2018, but was in the works for a long time.

Hi everyone! Many of you have probably seen plenty of before-and-after photos of American cities, showing how their streets have changed in the past century. I’ve always been fascinated by the historic streetscapes, especially those from the pre-automobile era, when American cities were compact, pedestrian oriented, with active and continuous street facades. Interestingly, these are also the qualities that today's urban designers are trying to achieve.

In an effort to recreate this urban form in a city-building game set in the Gilded Age, one challenge I'm having is how did the developers decide the location, program and density of their development in an era before zoning regulations were available? I'm currently using simulated traffic level, distance to key features like park or harbor, and nearby land uses to make the prediction. But I know this could be a much more complicated system. Curious to hear what you think were the major forces shaping the form of 19th-century American cities.

I’ve attached a short preview of the game to show the current progress. It's called The Gilded City, and you can find its Steam page here. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Hey everyone!

I’m working on a short survey for my PhD and could use your help! 😄

The idea is simple: you’ll be shown pairs of images of urban spaces, and all you have to do is choose the place where you’d rather live. If you like both equally, you can select that option too.

It only takes around 3–5 minutes to complete!
👉 https://allcity-survey.tecnico.ulisboa.pt/index.php?lang=en

All responses are anonymous and will be used solely for scientific research.

If you have a few minutes to spare and feel like helping out, I’d really appreciate it. Thanks a lot! 🙌

One of the things that makes Ambler, Pa., a historically blue collar suburb of Philadelphia, so vibrant and affordable is the large variety of housing types, including small lot "twins" without parking. From the Neighborhood Matters newsletter:

"Most people are puzzled when I say that I'm happy my home lacks parking. Why would I wish such a hardship on myself? Why would I prefer the inconvenience of competing with my neighbors for spots on the street?"

"It's not that I necessarily look forward to the occasional frustration of driving a block or two over to park. But I like what it represents: a cost-savings. Like the shared wall and the small yard, the lack of parking makes my house cheaper. These concessions allow me to afford a home within walking distance of all that stuff I mentioned earlier. It's the free market at its best."

Hey NYC Transit Riders! (If you are not in or a NYC native no worries! You can answer the questions with your thoughts in general!)

I'm a CUNY Brooklyn College student double majoring in Economics and Anthropology. This project focuses on how the subway environment, like official MTA signs, commercial ads, social messaging, and police presence, shapes the daily commuting experiences of everyday New Yorkers.

Whether you ride the train in the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan, or Staten Island, I'd loveeeee your input!

Take the 2-minute survey here: survey
Of course, this survey is 100% anonymous & voluntary.

Thank you for supporting CUNY undergraduate research!

My contact email is: [jacob.frye32@login.cuny.edu](mailto:jacob.frye32@login.cuny.edu) - please feel free to reach out with any questions! I am doing more in-depth interviews, so if you are interested, please let me know!

Hey everyone! I made a short documentary about moving from hometown of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, to Manchester, UK, and how experiencing a more walkable city changed my perspective on urban design and my hometown.

My film explores car dependency, walkability, and how cities can reinvent themselves. Would love to hear what you guys think!

On a recent road trip through rural regions, I noticed pocket-friendly mini-bottles (like 200ml sodas) sold everywhere for the equivalent of just $0.12 (₹10). They are incredibly convenient, yet completely missing from major cities.

It’s a broader retail trend. The ultra-cheap mini-packs of popular snacks and drinks have vanished from urban convenience stores.

Furthermore, grocery delivery apps only stock larger, pricier sizes. Even when major supermarket chains literally own these budget beverage brands, they refuse to stock the mini-variants in their massive urban hypermarkets.

This isn't a city vs. country debate, but rather a curiosity about retail supply chains. A few theories:

1. Urban Real Estate: High city rents force urban retailers to prioritize high-margin, larger items to maximize profit per square foot.

2. Delivery App Economics: Quick-commerce relies on average order value. Delivering a $0.12 item doesn't cover the operational cost of the rider and warehouse.

3. Market Segmentation: Brands push low-cost, single-serve "sachet sizes" to rural areas to fight cheap, unbranded local competition, while protecting their premium profit margins in cities.

It feels like city dwellers are trapped in a "Large Pack Conspiracy." If you want a cheap, portion-controlled drink, the corporate universe expects you to drive an hour out into the countryside to get it!

Anyone in FMCG or retail supply chain management know the real operational secret behind this?

The American Community Survey began collecting data on housing supply down to the census tract level in 2010, so if you're wondering why these squiggles are drawn the way they are it's because they're defined by 2010 census tract boundaries. I started from the downtown census tract for each city and globbed on exterior census tracts where most housing growth is happening until I reached an equivalent land area between the cities.

I included Los Angeles here because a) because I think more people are familiar with the layout and scale of downtown LA which might provide some frame of reference for people less familiar with the Texas cities, b) they're all fairly similar in being downtown areas not built on an ocean front or large lake front (sorry Town Lake, I know you're technically a lake) and c) I was just curious what these numbers would look like for L.A.! I love all the growth that's happened there lately.

Truthfully I was only really interested in doing this up to the 5 sq mi area, but I suspected people would want to see other areas further out included, or feel I neglected this or that neighborhood, so I continued on to 10 sq miles. This is the result of a lot of tedious work so I hope you find it interesting!

So this bridge opened last weekend in my city. There's almost no sources on this project online that aren't in polish, I'll still link some of them and if you have trouble translating them if you ask I'll try to help to best of my abilities.

Wikipedia page

It's not all rosy, especially when it comes to mixing flow of cyclists and pedestrians. I was there by bike and while on the bridge itself streams are separated, enter/exit ramps are just dangerous. No signs, no directions, no separations. Nothing to prevent accidents. You'd think that when designing a bridge exclusively for cyclists and pedestrians they'd think of that but nope, nothing. Just vibes.

We'll see, maybe they fix those issues before first serious incident.

Some of problems are also detailed in this article.

Anyway, it's still an interesting project and one can only hope it's as successful as neighboring Father Bernatka footbridge, which really revitalized both sides of the river. And I mean it went from unofficial public toilet to nice restaurants, coffee shops and just nice place to be, so fingers crossed it works here as well.

I remember in the pandemic how Austin's prices skyrocketed, just like many many other mid sized cities. We all agreed that was a bad thing. Then not many years later the housing price collapse happened, everyone said "people are fleeing Austin like crazy, that's why prices are crashing."

I trusted those reports, because I ultimately dont have a connection to the city and it confirmed my bias that I didn't understand hype for the city the two times ive been. I've recently started looking up Austin's populate, it never dropped. There wasn't even a 1 year drop in populate. In fact, it kept growing.

This makes me now believe that a mass disinformation campaign was ran. Housing prices declining was intentional and a major success for all cities to look at. Instead, we were all told Austin was a rotten fruit who was actually damaged by more affordable housing.

This looks at Median Household Income, as measured in the US Census American Community Survey, between 2014 and 2024 in all New England towns and cities with a population of at least 20,000. There are a total of 97 such communities in Massachusetts, 56 in Connecticut, 19 in Rhode Island, 13 in New Hampshire, 11 in Maine, and just 2 in Vermont.

A few striking points:

• Of the 198 towns and cities analyzed, only about 20% could be classified as urban in character, but they saw some of the biggest gains. In fact, urban places made up a majority of the towns and cities placing in the Top 25. Some of New England's most urban places - Boston, Cambridge, Providence, Somerville, etc. - tanked in the Top 25.
• Connecticut doesn't seem to be keeping up with the rest of New England. No Conn. towns or cities placed in the Top 25, but a disproportionate number showed up in the Bottom 25.