Neighbourhoods

For 50 years, from 1919 to 1969, Evanston, Illinois turned its back on its Black residents. It withheld opportunities that were offered white residents. Today, residents living in the...

From Manteca, California come tales of the hard lives of the middle and upper classes, together with the tribulations of the housing developers who serve them. Viewed from a...

An affordable home would seem on the surface to be an unusual weapon with which to face a violent gun battle with a neighbourhood gang. Unusual? How about bonkers! And...

Two years ago, after a two year process, the City of Boulder approved by a vote of 7-2 an ordinance to allow housing co-operatives as dwelling units. Opponents felt...

Rabbits, it might be said, can't breed fast enough to keep up with humans. Look at our world population increasing by the billions. Even in Australia, where rabbits are...

After the sub-prime mortgage blowout in 2008, there were uncountable housing evictions. As well, many homeowners stretched beyond the limit of their resources abandoned their underwater mortgages (more money...

There is a remarkable worldwide agreement amongst Defenders of the Neighbourhood Faith. All sooner or later discover that they must erect verbal battlements around their modest homesteads and those...

Even California's legendary neighbourhood NIMBYNot In My Back Yard activists have had difficulty withstanding the relentless pressure for gentrification in downtown neighbourhoods. In 2015, San Francisco took steps to...

Survey articles on affordable housing in America are prone to offer 'top ten' cities where the housing market is still somewhat affordable. Or 'top fifteen.' Or the like. That...

As of mid-January 2019, The U.S. Congress has apparently passed from simple dysfunction into a legislative coma. One half of that august body offers up little yelps, accompanied by...

In a remarkably lopsided Council decision, Minneapolis, Minnesota has made American history by shafting detached-house zoning in every city neighbourhood, even the most upscale and exclusive. This comprehensive decision is...

Owning a home on leased land? These days, most affordable housing discussions of this method of home ownership focus on community land trusts, where the home owner has a...

Some pretty darned exceptional Americans have donated sweat equity to help form no less than thirty-four little communities of good spirit and good work in the company of other...

Form-based code is a method of land use regulation promoted by the Form-Based Codes Institute, which operates out of Washington D.C. Urban planning is in many ways like flying blind....

Researchers in the United States are investigating inclusionary zoning as a regulatory tool to improve health outcomes. Their findings are reported in the journal Health Affairs. Land uses are regulated...

The American housing industry, acting without doubt in enlightened self-interest, promotes the most profitable thing that you can be enticed to demand, so that they can supply it. Enter 'workforce'...

NIMBY: Not in My Back Yard. Part of an ongoing collection of articles exploring some of the many ways that a worldwide affordable housing crisis is opposed.

For a city like Toronto, Ontario, amalgamated in 1998 from 6 separate municipalities, rooming houses are a festering affordable sore on the tender underbelly of urban housing. Pre-amalgamation Toronto...

The suburban dream did not begin with 2500 square foot (230 sq m) houses. Nestled towards the heart of many cities are modest houses on tree-lined streets, the suburbs...

According to free market conservatives, American public housing is dead. It was the victim of its socialist anti-free-enterprise roots and of the lower class inhabitants who, in fits of...

Lack of affordable housing has always been a straightforward problem for 'company towns.' Almost always built in support of resource-based industries such as mining or pulp and paper mills,...

The great American public housing projects have failed. They became lawless, violent, unliveable. The great unanswered question: did the needy, with their brutish, immoral, uncivilized and criminal ways, cause...

Opportunity: an elusive, unattainable dream for those trapped in poverty-stricken inner city neighbourhoods which are predominantly black. Opportunity? Opportunity to live in good neighbourhoods, send children to good schools,...

America's repeal of net neutrality has been greeted by much handwringing, and the spectre of giant telecom companies upping prices and limiting options for customers. But there is another way...

Affordable. . . walkable. . . good schools . . . rare signs of a vanishing civilization. Across the United States, just 14 percent of neighborhoods manage to be at...