How Transit-Oriented Development Can Prevent Displacement
In recent years, the blocks around Oakland’s Fruitvale Transit Village have seen many changes that are typical of urban neighborhoods around the United States. Housing prices are on the rise, and the...
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The Global Housing Crisis
From reading the press, you’d think the housing crisis is mainly relevant to superstar cities like New York, London, and San Francisco. But housing is becoming increasingly expensive in a wide range of...
View ArticleMeet the PHIMBYs
If you’re familiar with CityLab, you know your NIMBYs—the homeowners who say “Not In My Backyard” whenever anyone proposes constructing new housing in high-opportunity areas.And you’ve probably met...
View ArticleYIMBYs Defeated as California’s Transit Density Bill Stalls
An ambitious zoning bill in California that was aimed at alleviating the state’s acute housing shortage has not survived its first committee hearing. On Tuesday night, legislators killed SB 827, which...
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Five Breakthroughs That Could Make You Love the Bus
The Union Station bus deck in Washington, D.C., is a loud and smelly place. Municipal and inter-city buses rumble in and out, perfuming the semi-enclosed depot with the stench of combusted diesel. The...
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The American Housing Crisis Might Be Our Next Big Political Issue
The advertising executive Michael Franzini, founder of the nonprofit ad agency Public Interest, has created campaigns to fight AIDS, spur Holocaust awareness, and advocate for STEM education. The cause...
View ArticleA Healthcare Giant Enters the Battle for Cheaper Housing
Housing is healthcare. That’s a common refrain among leaders working on public health issues that range from substance abuse to food insecurity. Fighting poverty and homelessness, and treating the many...
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What San Francisco's Mayoral Race Says About the City's Progressive Soul
“Why did the political establishment oust San Francisco’s first African American woman mayor?” The words are splayed across a wall of gilded portraits of San Francisco mayors past on the cover of a...
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The Obama Center: Caught in an Old David vs. Goliath Drama
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the storied occupation of Columbia University, during which student and neighborhood activists prevented the construction of a functionally segregated gym in a...
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Why Little Vehicles Will Conquer the City
The public reaction to the arrival of dockless bikes and electric scooters in U.S. cities can be tracked in stages. The first stage, for many, was annoyance. Who were these grown men and women on...
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CityLab University: Inclusionary Zoning
If you’ve hung around the CityLab site, sat through a City Council meeting, or hobnobbed with a housing developer, you’ve probably run across the term “inclusionary zoning.” You might even think you...
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The Dirty Truth About San Francisco's Sidewalks
The Great San Francisco Poop Crisis officially entered a new stage on July 13, when, in one of her first interviews following her swearing in, Mayor London Breed observed, “I will say there is more...
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Behold San Francisco's $2 Billion Bus Station
On Saturday, downtown San Francisco got a new transit center and a new park at the same time.Thousands of people came to the official grand opening of the Salesforce Transit Center, an undulating,...
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CityLab University: Induced Demand
It’s time again for “CityLab University,” a resource for understanding some of the most important concepts related to cities and urban policy. If you like this feature, have constructive feedback, or...
View ArticleWhy Cities Must Tackle Single-Family Zoning
In my neighborhood in San Francisco (or, more accurately, my parents’ neighborhood) there’s a plan afoot to build 42 units of new housing in two parking lots, just steps from a light rail line. Thanks...
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CityLab University: The Who’s Who of Urbanism
Rather than ranking “top urbanists,” this edition of CityLab University seeks to fill out perspectives on important shapers of the modern city. Whether you’re an urban-studies nerd or a newcomer to the...
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With Trains Like Schwebebahn, No Wonder Germans Love Public Transit
My first view of the Schwebebahn was from my living room as a 10-year-old watching the Travel Channel on TV. I remember being amazed by the dinky rail cars, precariously suspended above a river by...
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CityLab University: Shared-Equity Homeownership
It’s time again for CityLab University, a resource for understanding some of the most important concepts related to cities and urban policy. If you have constructive feedback or would like to see a...
View ArticleWhat Happened When I Rented an E-Scooter for (Almost) a Month
One afternoon in late May, a Bird scooter appeared in front of my house in San Francisco. This would be considered a normal sight in many American cities, where the shared electric vehicles have been...
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8 Buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright Added to UNESCO World Heritage List
Buildings designed by the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright are now in the same class as the Taj Mahal and the Great Wall of China, according to UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific...
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