Earlier this month, The New York Times ran an op-end titled “The Walls We Won’t Tear Down” about how some of society’s worst problems have a very boring cause: exclusionary zoning laws. Here’s the conclusion: Just as it is shameful for government regulation to exclude people from neighborhoods on the basis of race, it is similarly deplorable […]
A handy, trustworthy tenant who paid his rent on time — nope, wasn’t enough for a suburban landlord who wanted to cash in.
Here’s a chart from an excellent ten-year-old report out of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute called “Socially Optimal Transport Prices and Markets” that stands up pretty well today. The 50-page report goes into detail about different country’s incentives for driving, walking, transit, and bicycling in an effort to explain why country’s transportation systems are so […]
It’s no longer news that business incentive programs are controversial. A landmark New York Times investigation back in 2012 found that state and local governments gave up more than $80 billion each year to companies. Further back but closer to home, a 2008 report from Minnesota’s Office of the Legislative Auditor concluded that the now-defunct […]
Here’s an interesting chart from The Economist (sent in by Board Member Dana Demaster) that centers on the effectiveness of “surge pricing” as used by Uber in Manhattan. Here you go: The concept of surge pricing is something that comes up a lot in urban design discussions, especially around solving issues like parking, transit fares, […]
In August 2016, the city of Saint Paul lost a court case in the Minnesota Supreme Court. It was about right-of-way fees, a primary funding source for the city’s roads. To make a long story short, the court found that the fee was not a fee but a tax, meaning that every non-profit and government property […]
Night in the Woods is a video game about an anthropomorphic cat. It’s also one of the most insightful explorations of the challenges struggling communities face today — and the hidden strengths that bring those communities together. Night in the Woods tells the story of a college dropout named Mae who returns to her hometown […]
First off, apologies for the insult. The title is of course a riff on the famous 90s political truism, “it’s the economy, stupid.” It’s amazing to me how easily we forget this little fact. Facilitating safe easy street crossings should be “job one” for any urban street design, and yet so many of our streets […]
Minneapolis and St. Paul have a lot to gain by designing roads with walkability in mind — including a competitive edge with the suburbs.
In Part I I covered the basics of what property taxes are. This time I’ll dive into how exactly property taxes are calculated, starting with (for Minneapolis) the half billion dollar question. What is tax capacity? In its simplest form, the tax capacity of a property is its taxable market value (explained below) multiplied by its class […]