While the U.S. rental market has continued to expand, the markets for single-family houses and condominiums is still recovering. Affordability is an acute problem in both, according to the findings of the latest State of the Nation’s Housingreport, issued by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.
Minneapolis was rated the big American city with the best park system for the third straight year, according to the Trust for Public Land’s fifth annual ParkScore® index. Minneapolis edged out St. Paul for the top spot among the 100 largest U.S. cities. The Twin Cities tied for first last year.
Investing in lower-emission public transport, using more renewable energy, and increasing efficiency in commercial buildings and waste management in cities across the globe could generate $17 trillion in savings in current dollars by 2050, according to a recent report from the New Climate Economy, an advocacy group.
Suburban office parks, which developed and spread far and wide as businesses left American cities, are now losing ground to those same cities, according to a new report by Smart Growth America.
Declaring that the major parks in America’s largest cities are enjoying “a golden age,” the Trust for Public Land says that conservancies—the private bodies that work in close partnership with municipal agencies to aid urban parks—deserve part of the credit.
From 2007 to 2011, jobs grew faster in many downtowns than in surrounding areas, reversing a nearly 60-year-long trend in the United States. This is according to research by City Observatory, a think tank based in Portland, Oregon.
From 1971 to 2008, only five states passed legislation enabling land banks; but in the last six years, another eight have done so. As vacancies and blight have plagued parts of the United States still recovering from recession and the mortgage foreclosure crisis, so too has land banking grown. There are now some 120 land banks and land-banking programs in 13 states, with West Virginia joining the list in 2014.
A wake-up call regarding the rising tide of older Americans on course to swamp the nation’s housing resources has been issued by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies and AARP.
To determine a city’s affordability, housing costs cannot be viewed in a vacuum. Transportation costs are also a major factor, according to a new policy brief, Location Affordability in Large U.S. Cities: Variability among Types of Households, from the Citizens Budget Commission (CBC) in New York City.
A new report from NYU’s Furman Center underscores the challenges of retrofitting New York City’s multifamily housing stock against the threat of rising sea levels.
