Every day, The Overhead Wire collects news about cities and sends the links to their email list. At the end of the week they take some of the most popular stories and post them to Greater Greater Washington, a group blog similar to Streets.mn that focuses on urban issues in the D.C. region. They are national and international links, sometimes entertaining or absurd but often useful.
Transit projects for 2025: Yonah Freemark is out with his annual update to his Transit Explorer program that shows all the fixed-guideway transit projects planned, under construction and completed in the United States. Check out the map and his post to see all the projects moving forward. An international update is forthcoming. (Yonah Freemark | Transport Politic)
Rethinking U.S. housing construction: As cities in the United States struggle to build housing, perhaps they should take best practices in building from Vienna and Paris. In Vienna, authorities have flipped the entitlement and permitting process to reduce costs. Paris, meanwhile, provides developers with standardized building plans already approved by neighborhood councils and city zoning regulators. (Gerhard W. Mayer and Lindsay Sturman | Common Edge)
Property tax reform and local inequities: Property tax revolts are happening right now, but most people aren’t noticing. Though the current movement is mostly people upset about higher property values resulting in higher taxes, it does bring into question whether the system needs reform. And there could be a silver lining: the development of a more equitable funding mechanism that reduces inequality. (David Schleicher | Slate)
An intergenerational arrangement: Shannon Penner moved into intergenerational housing as an experiment and found the experience beneficial all around. In exchange for housing, she had to volunteer 30 hours a month by socializing and teaching exercise classes. The older folks she lived with gained companionship and understanding, and she got access to affordable housing as she studied. (Shannon Penner | Maclean’s)
Forever chemicals reaching tap water: Research is finding that PFAS, commonly known as forever chemicals and linked to cancer, are finding their way into the water supply through treated wastewater. Studies are showing that after treatment the chemicals are becoming more concentrated and that sludge used as fertilizer for growing crops includes large amounts of PFAS as well, calling into question the practice. These findings emphasize that PFAS use must be cut down and eventually eliminated to reduce contamination. (Hiroko Tabuchi | New York Times)
This week on the Talking Headways podcast, we are joined by Ryan Kelley, community development manager for Hennepin County in Minnesota. Ryan chats with us about the county’s transit-oriented communities program and how they support commercial preservation and aid businesses.
Quote of the Week
“The reason you can get the same amount of energy to move a vehicle from a tiny fraction of the land area — just 0.65%! — is that plants are really shitty solar panels. It’s easy to understand: The sunlight-to-energy conversion of plants is 0.023% versus 20% for a solar panel. That’s nearly 1000x better.”
— Stephen Leahy in his newsletter Need to Know discussing benefits of replacing 30 million acres of corn for ethanol with 200,000 acres of solar panels.
Photo at top by Laura liberal on Unsplash