Tuesday, June 21, 2016

From Next City
Determining How Subsidized Housing Factors Into a More Affordable San Francisco

Building more market-rate housing in the Bay Area may reduce displacement pressure at the regional level, but building subsidized housing has over twice the impact, according to researchers at UC Berkeley’s Urban Displacement Project. In a report released this week, they note that at the level of San Francisco blocks, neither market-rate nor subsidized housing production has a significant impact on displacement though, likely due to “the extreme mismatch between supply and demand.” Read more: Determining How Subsidized Housing Factors Into a More Affordable S.F. – Next City

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

From PBS NewsHour
Urban designers transform these streets
into pedestrian paradise

New York City’s streets underwent a radical transformation under the leadership of Janette Sadik-Khan, who served as transportation commissioner from 2007 to 2013. In the new book “Streetfight: A Handbook for an Urban Revolution,” Sadik-Khan and co-author Seth Solomonow share the lessons from six years of redesigning the streets of New York City with more plazas, bike lanes and rapid bus lanes. Read more: Urban designers transformed these five spaces into pedestrian paradise | PBS NewsHour

Friday, June 3, 2016

From Co.Exist
Car-Free Neighbourhood Redesigns Suburbia

It's possible that some people might own a car in a new neighborhood designed for Mannheim, Germany. But they won't be able to drive up to their doors: The entire neighborhood is car-free, with parking hidden underground.
Instead of roads, the neighborhood will have sidewalks that connect with paths in a surrounding park. "Essentially the project recreates the park experience on a residential scale, and removing the road allows the park to permeate throughout the site unrestricted," says Johannes Pilz, one of the architects from the design firm MVRDV, which worked on the development for Traumhaus, a German affordable housing developer. This New Car-Free Neighborhood Redesigns Suburbia | Co.Exist | ideas + impact