YIMBY News for 6/28

[Eric Budd]

The Roads That Tear Communities Apart

Governing

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KEYWORD SCORE: 46.77. affordable, affordable housing, complete street, construction, development, growth, house, housing, income, mobility, multimodal, real estate, rent, segregation, transportation, urban

As you drive on an interstate highway through almost any American city going to work, taking your children to soccer matches or following your phone’s navigation app to a new destination, you may be unaware that you are traveling on a transportation system that is as much a symbol of racial segregation as a Confederate monument. Divided by Design, a report by Smart Growth America, documents how our transportation systems have harmed and continue to harm low-income communities and communities of color. Yes, by design. In addition to dividing neighborhoods along class and racial lines, the build

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How Creative Design Can Turn Strict Zoning Codes Into Success Stories

Strong Towns

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KEYWORD SCORE: 41.33. affordable, affordable housing, development, house, housing, housing crisis, parking, project, public hearing, rent, urban, walk, zoning

*(Images courtesy of **R. John Anderson**.)* *Our communities are struggling with a lack of both available and affordable housing.* Our current approaches to housing are not working, and people are writing volumes on how the system is broken — but I believe the more important conversation is about how we can respond to the crisis. We need to focus on the tools that people are discovering that could allow us to build housing at scale with locally available resources. In "Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis," my colleagues Chuck Marohn and Daniel Herriges b

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The Weekly Wrap: Young Native Hawaiians Win a Huge Climate Judgment

Next City

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KEYWORD SCORE: 32.94. affordable, apartment, growth, housing, housing crisis, income, project, rent, transportation, urban, walk

[image: The Weekly Wrap] (Photo by Amanda Phung / Unsplash) Welcome back to The Weekly Wrap, our Friday roundup of stories that explain the problems oppressing people in cities and elevate the solutions that bring us closer to economic, environmental and social justice. We’re collecting stories about the impact of our journalism. Complete this survey to tell us how we’ve changed the way you work. Also, a programming note: We’ll be skipping next week’s edition and will be back in our inboxes on July 12. Now onto the briefs! Hawaii Youth Win Climate Settlement Hawaii reached a settlement with cl

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Changes approved by city zoning board for six-story apartment building overlooking the Arkansas River in Pueblo

Colorado Public Radio

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KEYWORD SCORE: 32.63. affordable, affordable housing, apartment, development, house, housing, income, market-rate, parking, project, rent, urban, walk, zoning

Variance requests for the Bluffs multi-family building project in Pueblo were approved by the city’s zoning board of appeals on Tuesday night. If it ultimately gets final approval, the proposed six-story apartment building would overlook the Arkansas River near the white water park. A couple of nearby property owners were on hand during the public meeting to express their concerns about parking and traffic. The developers and city planning staff said that one of the adjacent roads will be rebuilt allowing better traffic flow than currently exists. They also noted plans to mitigate the reduced

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Op-Ed: Sound Transit Needs Its Own Permitting Authority

The Urbanist

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KEYWORD SCORE: 28.97. bike lane, bus rapid transit, construction, development, height limit, parking, preservation, project, transportation, urban, walk

Sound Transit is facing numerous project delays and cost escalation issues, and one big reason is that policymakers have designed the system that way. Cumbersome local permitting processes complicate projects and slow timelines. Agency boardmembers have a narrow opportunity this month to reduce some of Sound Transit’s permitting problems through revisions to its internal betterments policy — project elements that are added beyond the basic scope of a project. But it won’t be enough to alleviate the issue, because of the broader permitting issues Sound Transit faces as it deals with dozens of B

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Morales Makes Last Minute Push for $1.7 Billion Transportation Levy

The Urbanist

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KEYWORD SCORE: 25.61. bike lane, construction, development, mobility, preservation, project, public hearing, rent, transportation, urban, walk

As a final committee vote next Tuesday approaches, Councilmember Tammy Morales has proposed a $150 million increase to the size of Seattle’s next transportation levy to fund additional projects. Morales’ amendment would bring the eight-year levy total to $1.7 billion and add around $18.5 million per year to the budget of the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) through 2032. Since it was released in early April, the draft levy has seen two $100 million increases, the first by Mayor Bruce Harrell and the second by Councilmember Rob Saka, who chairs the transportation committee chair. How

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America’s Biggest Death Cult

Darrell Owens Substack

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KEYWORD SCORE: 25.19. bike lane, parking, parking lot, project, public space, rent, transportation, urban, walk, zoning

I was split on whether gun deaths or traffic deaths are the biggest death cults in the United States, but I’ve decided it goes to cars. However neutered gun control is, it’s not a popular mandate in polling but rather a quirk in effective lobbying. Car deaths and automobile manufacturer deregulation are a completely different level of insanity. Unfortunately, car centrism is the popular mandate in that most Americans really don’t care about people being killed by cars, even if the victims are their own family members, and are seemingly resistant to taking the necessary systemic steps to save l

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Proposed apartment tower reignites debate over building heights in Colorado Springs

Colorado Public Radio

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KEYWORD SCORE: 23.86. apartment, density, development, downtown, height limit, mixed-use, project, real estate, rent, urban, zone, zoning

Colorado Springs real estate investment firm The O’Neil Group unveiled Wednesday a proposal for a 27-story, 300-foot tall glass and steel mixed-use apartment tower. It would be the tallest building in the state’s second-largest city, surpassing the Wells Fargo tower — which sits at 16 stories and has held that title since 1990. The proposal was presented to the city’s urban renewal authority. It’s also a 100-foot shorter version of the same building the O’Neil Group brought before the same city board last November. This shorter tower — now dubbed ONE VeLa — was revealed just days after a city

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This downtown resident wants 16th Street Mall construction wrapped

Denverite

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KEYWORD SCORE: 23.48. apartment, construction, development, downtown, housing, project, public space, walk

Lisa Evans, a longtime Denverite, moved to the 16th Street Mall, in July of 2021, months after downtown residents pushed Mayor Michael Hancock to beef up policing and crack down on crime. At the time, downtown had been emptied by pandemic closures. Office buildings sat vacant. Restaurants, dependent on business from office workers, struggled to stay open. Once vibrant streets felt grey. By April 2022, construction, a decade in the planning, started on the 16th Street Mall. A pedestrian walks around a construction barrier on the 16th Street Mall. May 31, 2023. The entire strip, once a car-free

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Ensuring Low-Income Communities Get Their Share of the Green Energy Pie

Next City

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KEYWORD SCORE: 23.06. affordable, affordable housing, development, house, housing, income, project, urban

(Photo by Los Muertos Crew / Pexels) Low-income communities and people of color are more likely to live in areas affected by flooding, poor air quality, and extreme temperatures, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). And, these negative effects of climate change are intensifying. To help find solutions, the Justice Climate Fund strives to ensure that the communities that need it most benefit from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a federal program providing billions of dollars from the EPA for clean energy and climate projects. The Justice Climate Fund is an initiative

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Residents of a 10-story Lincoln Park apartment building went without elevators for a week during the heat wave

Denverite

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KEYWORD SCORE: 21.58. affordable, affordable housing, apartment, cost of housing, housing, parking, parking garage, rent, urban

A 10-story apartment building in Lincoln Park went approximately a week without any elevator access, including during Denver’s 100-degree day earlier this week. For residents of 1200 Galapago St., some of whom are older or have disabilities, their only option was to take the stairs — sometimes up 10 floors. And for a portion of one day, the doors in the stairwell exiting into apartment hallways were locked, blocking residents from reaching their homes. “We could not access our units, so if your dog was upstairs, if your child was upstairs, if your medicine was upstairs, no access,” said Nathan

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Gun Violence in Schools Has Seattle Officials Scrambling

The Urbanist

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KEYWORD SCORE: 18.95. bus stop, development, house, parking, parking lot, rent, urban, walk

Gun violence has recently been taking a heavy toll on Seattle youth. On June 6, a 17-year-old Garfield student Amarr Murphy-Paine was killed in a shooting at Garfield High School. Another 17-year-old student was shot in the leg at a bus stop across from Garfield High School in March. In January, a 15-year-old student was killed in a shooting at the Teen Life Center next to Chief Sealth High School. In 2023, a 19-year-old suffered gunshot wounds at Garfield’s Teen Life Center parking lot, and in November of 2022, a 17-year-old student was shot and killed at Ingraham High School. Mayor Bruce Har

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