YIMBY News for 4/20

[Eric Budd]

Op-Ed: Seattle Must Fund MHA Inclusionary Zoning or Axe It

The Urbanist

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KEYWORD SCORE: 55.33. affordable, affordable housing, construction, density, growth, housing, income, market-rate, project, rent, renter, single family, supply, urban, walk, yimby, zone, zoning

Seattle built a better affordable housing system. It just forgot to update the old one.[image: Op-Ed: Seattle Must Fund MHA Inclusionary Zoning or Axe It] The City of Seattle is financing more housing than ever and yet it’s permitting less of it than at any point in a decade. That might sound like a contradiction, but it's really a policy failure hiding behind a success story. The success story is real and worth telling. Over the past several years, Seattle has built one of the best affordable housing programs of any city in the country. The Housing Levy was renewed and expanded by voters in 2

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In new affordability push, Colorado Democrats look to shrink the single-family home

Colorado Sun

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KEYWORD SCORE: 52.89. affordable, affordable housing, apartment, average house, condo, construction, density, development, homeowner, house, housing, housing cost, housing crisis, income, parking, project, public hearing, rent, renter, single family, single-family, urban, zone, zoning

[image: Two modern houses with gravel landscaping and a Habitat for Humanity sign in front, under a clear blue sky.] In their ongoing bid to bring down housing costs, statehouse Democrats this year have shifted their attention from townhomes and apartments to pursue a new strategy: shrinking the single-family home. The Colorado House earlier this year passed two bills designed to make it easier to build detached single-family homes on smaller lots. The legislation comes in response to what housing advocates say is an underappreciated factor in the state’s housing crisis — the homes we build to

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Denver Pavilions could be the city’s next “central social district,” experts say

Colorado Sun

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KEYWORD SCORE: 37.14. affordable, affordable housing, development, downtown, housing, hud, mixed-use, parking, parking lot, project, public space, real estate, rent, urban, walk

[image: Sandwich board signs reading "we're open" stand near the pedestrian walkway at Denver Pavilions shopping center] Denver should think socially as it creates a new future for the Denver Pavilions, a 10-person advisory panel from the Urban Land Institute told city leaders on Friday. The panel was made up of real estate professionals representing cities ranging from Los Angeles to Cincinnati and Fort Lauderdale, as well as architects, urban planners and real estate developers. The recommendations follow a five-day study of the Pavilions, which started April 12, to uncover and address key c

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Local Governments Can Shape AI’s Future Through Strategic Procurement

Next City

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KEYWORD SCORE: 28.91. development, housing, income, mobility, project, rent, urban

A worker prepares a plot of land for an AI data center, as a retired power plant being refurbished to provide electricity for the facility rises in the distance Tuesday, March 24, 2026, in Independence, Missouri. (Photo by Charlie Riedel / AP) *This essay is part of In the Shadow of the Server, a Next City series on the fight over urban technology infrastructure — who builds it, who benefits, and how local leaders can push back.* The Trump administration’s recent standoff with Anthropic is a stark reminder that the government doesn’t just regulate markets but can reshape them overnight. With a

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‘A Solution, But To What Problem?’ Experts Say AVs Are The Elephant In The Room, But There’s Still Time To Figure Out Their Role

Streetsblog Net

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KEYWORD SCORE: 21.92. downtown, house, mobility, parking, rent, transportation, zone

Few op-eds that we’ve published over the years spurred more reader engagement than the Sam Schwartz-Kelly McGuinness-penned piece earlier this month about autonomous vehicles. We had commissioned the piece from the pair of experts after Gov. Hochul ended Waymo’s testing of AV taxis in New York City, mainly to ask the simple question, “What now?” Frankly, the piece was fairly anodyne — “What now? Society should have a serious debate about the role of AVs so we don’t end up with what happened in the 1920s, when we failed to have a serious debate about cars” — but reader interest was exceptionall

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One Wisconsin City Beat Back a Data Center. Now Residents Are Helping Others Do the Same.

Next City

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KEYWORD SCORE: 21.64. construction, development, house, project, urban, zone, zoning

A rendering of the development planned by Vantage in Port Washington, Wisconsin. About four hours away in Menomonie, organizers successfully blocked a separate data center proposal from Balloonist, LLC. (Photo courtesy Vantage Data Centers) *This story is part of In the Shadow of the Server, a Next City series on the fight over urban technology infrastructure — who builds it, who benefits, and how local leaders can push back.* A small Wisconsin city has just notched a big win in its fight against a proposed data center, thanks to grassroots community organizing and support from a growing state

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When Traffic Violence Hits The Same Family Twice — Years Apart, On Exactly the Same Street

Streetsblog Net

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KEYWORD SCORE: 20.38. bus stop, parking, rent, transportation, vision zero, walk, zone

The death of a husband and wife in separate crashes at the same intersection is renewing a battle for traffic calming in the Denver area — and sparking conversation about why multiple people have to die before communities take action to calm dangerous roads. Gerry Goldberg, 82, made headlines across America last month when he was killed in a two-car crash at the corner of East Belleview and South Franklin in metro Denver, just a block and a half from his home — the exact same place where a *different* driver had killed his wife Andie, 59, while she was on a morning run in 2024. Many journalist

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