YIMBY News for 9/8

[Eric Budd]

Cañon City is using the Arkansas River to wash off its “prison town” reputation. Steep obstacles remain.

Colorado Sun

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KEYWORD SCORE: 39.56. construction, development, downtown, house, housing, housing price, income, project, rent, supply, urban

*What is a river?* It depends on your point of view. Sun reporters have fanned out along the Arkansas River, from the headwaters near Leadville to the border with Kansas, to learn what the river means to people in the places it runs through. The series continues from Sunday’s opener at the river’s headwaters by flowing east through Cañon City. *ㅤ⚲ㅤ CAÑON CITY* In a tree-shrouded park on the banks of the Arkansas River, Corinne O’Hara counted the ways her family’s move from Summit County to this reputedly gritty outpost in southern Colorado turned into “a gift.” Instead of the sleepy prison tow

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While Seattle Population Spikes, Car Population Stalls Out

The Urbanist

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KEYWORD SCORE: 31.09. downtown, growth, homeowner, house, project, rent, renter, transportation, urban, walk

Seattle’s human population is growing fast, but its car population has stalled out. Between 2017 and 2023, Seattle added 35,000 households, but just 3,300 cars, new Census data has revealed — in news that is music to urbanist ears. Gene Balk broke down the data in his most recent “FYI Guy” column in the *Seattle Times*. “Census data shows the number of vehicles in the city has been effectively unchanged for years, even as the number of households has grown,” Balk wrote. “Because the number of cars has basically plateaued while the number of households has grown, the rate of car ownership has d

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A Message to Struggling Cities: Be Yourself

Governing

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KEYWORD SCORE: 20.72. development, downtown, homeowner, house, parking, parking lot, rent, urban

If you’re an admirer of Tolstoy, you are no doubt familiar with his dictum that all happy families are alike and all unhappy ones are unhappy in their own way. And if you are also a student of urban life, you might paraphrase Tolstoy by concluding that thriving cities are alike — it’s the failing cities that each fail in their own way. But if you travel around America these days, you may find that it’s the struggling cities that begin to look alike — the successful ones succeed in their own individual ways. At least, that’s the argument of longtime urban consultant Ryan Short, who makes his po

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