Every day, The Overhead Wire collects national and international news about cities and sends the links to their email list. At the end of the week they post some of the most popular stories to Greater Greater Washington, a group blog similar to Streets.mn that focuses on urban issues in the D.C. region.
Trips are now a commodity: Bill Fulton notes that in the 1980s, the head of SAS Airlines Chief Executive Officer Jan Carlzon thought of the whole trip a customer takes as a journey, versus just the leg where the customer was flying. Today, local trips have become commoditized in a similar way: People have started moving away from owning vehicles and instead buy movement and access directly — food delivery through DoorDash, a car trip through Uber or e-commerce delivery from Amazon. They’re buying the journey, not (just) the item itself. (Bill Fulton | The Future of Where)
Streets are shifting from social uses: New research used machine learning to look at the change in street use over the past 30 years – from William H Whyte’s time to today. It found that people use streets more as thoroughfares and linger less than they did previously (with walk speeds now 15% faster than before). What is leading to the behavior changes? Researchers suggest increases in incomes, more indoor spaces to congregate and smartphone proliferation may be related. (Fran Silverman | Yale School of the Environment)
Bipartisan housing bill: U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and Tim Scott (R-South Carolina) have put together a federal housing bill that has bipartisan support even after major administration cuts to housing programs. If passed as-is, the bill would change rules related to manufactured housing, tie block grants to future housing production and increase investments in opportunity zones. (Liz Goodwin and Rachel Siegel | Washington Post)
Housing supply impacts low-income rental market: In cities that have recently added a large amount of housing, rents in lower-income neighborhoods have dropped the most, according to research from Pew, suggesting that new supply impacts housing costs at the lower end of the market. Looking at over 1,600 ZIP Codes, they found that a 10% increase in housing supply was connected to a 5% lower increase in rents. (Seva Rodnyansky, Dennis Su, and Alex Horowitz | Pew Trusts)
Permitting slows down transit projects: Transit agencies often have to partner with multiple local agencies, such as city governments and departments of transportation, to build projects. A new report suggests that one reason for increased construction timelines are the numerous permits transit agencies need in order to build, each of which requires approval to move forward. A way to speed up the process, suggested in a bill from Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), would be to implement time limits on third parties’ approval or denial process. (Colleen Shalby | Los Angeles Times)
This week on the Talking Headways podcast, we’re joined by Madeline Brozen of the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. We talk about universal basic mobility and research her team has done on the Mobility Wallet Pilot Program in Los Angeles.
Quote of the Week
“We are building a system that, like our roads, assumes ownership of a specific device — this time, the smartphone. Invented just two decades ago, the smartphone offers instant information, connection to loved ones and powerful tools at our fingertips. But we are building a system that binds us to them.”
— Owen Haacke in NextCity discussing how society is creating smartphone dependence just like it created auto dependence
Photo at top by Cole Wyland on Unsplash