Construction workers, cashiers and janitors are moving out of Washington, D.C., while doctors, economists and software developers are moving in. As the cost of housing increases in the city, it’s part of a larger trend, says the District of Columbia’s Office of Revenue Analysis (ORA), which has low-wage workers fleeing for the suburbs, and higher-wage workers flocking to urban cores.
Source: Who’s Moving Into and Out of Washington, D.C. – Next City
The reading marks a change from almost unbridled consumer optimism in a housing market that has carried the Canadian economy since the 2008 global financial crisis, even as policy makers warn price gains in some cities are unsustainable.
Source: Fear Spreads of a Housing Crash in Canada | Alternative Economics
Bubbly cities like Singapore and Vancouver have started punishing foreign housing investors that have pushed up property prices to unaffordable – and unsustainable – rates. Foreign investors are now being taxed in many of these areas, and as a result, their real estate markets have begun to tank.During this housing burst, the most high-end, desirable locations will be hit the hardest.
Source: The Global Real Estate Bubble Is OFFICIALY Bursting | Seeking Alpha (sic)
In its recent issues, The Architectural Review has been on a mission, highlighting a phenomenon that they have named “Notopia.” Characterized by a “loss of identity and cultural vibrancy” and “a global pandemic of generic buildings,” Notopia is – in overly simplistic terms – a consequence of the cold logic of market forces combined with a disinterested populace. The AR’s campaign therefore aims to analyze this “thing of terror” and push back by raising public awareness and by proposing alternatives. And they need your help.
Source: Submit Your Ideas to The Architectural Review to Stop the Spread of #Notopia | ArchDaily
The physical heart of Cleveland is a 10-acre civic space called Public Square, but until recently it wasn’t exactly pulsing with life. Two of downtown’s busiest roadways, Ontario Street and Superior Avenue, bisected the square, and its four quadrants felt neglected and forgotten. Instead of being a destination, it was a place people avoided.
Yet now, following a 15-month, $50 million renovation, Public Square is reopening as a dramatically re-envisioned centerpiece of the city’s ongoing redevelopment efforts. Designed by James Corner Field Operations, the architects behind New York’s High Line, it now has a lush green lawn, unobstructed city views, a full-service cafe with outdoor seating and a mirror pool that reflects the landmark buildings lining the square.
Perhaps most significantly, traffic has been eliminated through the park except for buses.
Source: Cleveland’s Revamped Public Square Mixes Downtown’s Future With Preservation – Next City
For places that were meant to be unseen, alleys take up a not-insubstantial amount of space. A 2011 report by Mary Fialko and Jennifer Hampton, graduate students at the University of Washington*, found that in Seattle, there are 217,000 square feet of public alley space downtown, 85 percent of which are underused. The report estimated that reinvigorating alleyways could increase the number of total public space in the city by 50 percent.Alleys, too, are vital players in a city’s overall ecosystem. As the need for cities to rely on more sustainable approaches has become more pressing, the proliferation of trash and flooding in alleyways has come to be seen not only an aesthetic blight, but an environmental one.And as Daniel Freedman of the Los Angeles Sustainability Collaborative says, there’s a lot of crossover between sound environmental practices and livability. Revitalizing an alleyway creates an opportunity to introduce green infrastructure, but also, Freedman says, it invites the surrounding community to collaborate on improvements and make use of the space.
Several modern public housing projects are not only beautiful living spaces, but smart, money-saving, eco-friendly designs using innovative technologies.
There is a growing sense of tighter financial conditions, particularly to the commercial real estate sector. Late last year the regulators issued a joint statement on Prudent Risk Management for Commercial Real Estate Lending and the latest Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey (SLOOS) shows that banks tightened their lending standards to commercial real estate meaningfully in 4Q15…. The growing sense of gathering clouds in terms of tightening financial conditions to commercial real estate translates into a more challenging road ahead for US commercial real estate.
Lever Architecture has designed a 12-storey building for Portland, Oregon, that will be one of the tallest wooden buildings in the US.
Source: Lever Architecture proposes timber-framed tower for Portland
In Toronto, researchers recently found that people living on tree-lined streets reported health benefits equivalent to being seven years younger or receiving a $10,000 salary rise. As well as studies revealing benefits from everything from improved mental health to reduced asthma, US scientists have even identified a correlation between an increase in tree-canopy cover and fewer low-weight births. And economic studies show what any estate agent swears by: leafy streets sell houses. Street trees in Portland, Oregon, yielded an increase in house prices of $1.35bn, potentially increasing annual property tax revenues by $15.3m.
Source: Introducing ‘treeconomics’: how street trees can save our cities | Cities | The Guardian
They built fortunes and Paris:
In the seventeenth century, all these factors came together, and Paris became the European capital of conspicuous consumption when a new kind of wealth began to be very ostentatiously exhibited…All through the century, incalculably ostentatious displays of opulence were rolled out by non-Parisians of humble birth. The most publicized cases involved your men from poor families in the French provinces who, once they reached the French capital, had managed to amass fortunes. To a man, they owed their rags-to-riches stories to their instinct for the working of the age’s equivalent of high finance…
Guidebooks presented this financial elite’s impact on the cityscape as a noteworthy feature of modern Paris; their authors never failed to point out when a residence they recommended as particularly fine belonged to a man of finance. And indeed more than half the homes new to Paris in the seventeenth century and considered then and now to be of architectural significance were built by men who made their fortunes in finance rather than inheriting them. These men, who early in the century became known as “financiers,” were more than three times as likely as the scions of the great old families to build a home in seventeenth-century Paris and thereby to have helped create the original modern French architecture. And, as a 1707 work explained, this was evident to all: “Everyone knows that it’s because of the financiers that [Paris] has the special glow for which it is so renowned at present.”
The financiers were not the only group responsible for the “special glow” with which memorable modern architecture enveloped the city. A second profession also made a meteoric rise to prominence in the city on the move: the real-estate developer….
In the seventeenth century, Paris became a city in which to many the lure of money seemed omnipresent… a city that was “paradise for the rich and hell for the poor”…
Writers of every stripe… spoke of men of new wealth in the same way, as “leeches” who were bleeding the country dry and making paupers of honest citizens…..
The stories of Parisian financiers inspired the creation of other new words… nouveau riche… “the plague of our century”…”absolutely teeming with nouveaux riches, flaunting the fruit of their plundering of widows and orphans.”…
Parvenue, “one day a servant, the next, master of the house.”…
Millionnaire was initially a synonym for nouveau riche and parvenu, and individual of humble origins whose vast wealth was both sudden and ill-gotten….
Read the book – well worth the time.
How Paris Became Paris – The Invention of the Modern City by Joan DeJean, Bloomsbury Publishing
Sprawl costs the American economy more than $1 trillion annually, according to a new study by the New Climate Economy. That’s more than $3,000 for every man, woman, and child.
These costs include greater spending on infrastructure, public service delivery and transportation. The study finds that Americans living in sprawled communities directly bear $625 billion in extra costs. In addition, all residents and businesses, regardless of where they are located, bear an extra $400 billion in external costs.
via Sprawl costs US more than a trillion dollars a year | Better! Cities & Towns Online.
How nauseating: NYC provides tax support to billionaires:
New York City’s method of assessing property values is so out of whack that the buyer of the most expensive apartment ever sold — a $100 million duplex overlooking Central Park — pays taxes as if the place were worth just $6.5 million.
With controversial tax breaks granted to the One57 condo tower, the total property tax bill for the spectacular penthouse is just $17,268, an effective rate of 0.017 percent of its sale price.
By contrast, the owner of a nearby condo at 224 E. 52nd St. that recently sold for $1.02 million is paying an effective rate of 2.38 percent, or $24,279, according to data compiled for The Post by the Revaluate.com real-estate information website.
(via ZeroHedge)
Tax Breaks for Oligarchs: The $100 Million NY Apartment With A Property Tax Rate of o.017%
The U.S. overwhelmingly remains the most popular place in the world among foreign commercial real estate investors to place capital, according to the 23rd annual survey among members of the Association of Foreign Investors in Real Estate (AFIRE).
New York City returned to its accustomed spot as the top global market for foreign investment in real estate after being briefly displaced in 2014 by London. With the exception of last year, New York has held the top rank both globally and among U.S. cities since 2010.
NYC Recaptures Top Global Investment Market in Foreign Investor Survey – CoStar Group.
Small-scale urban spaces can be rich in biodiversity, contribute important ecological benefits for human mental and physical health (McPhearson et al., 2013), and overall help to create more livable cities. Micro_urban spaces are the sandwich spaces between buildings, rooftops, walls, curbs, sidewalk cracks, and other small-scale urban spaces that exist in the fissures between linear infrastructure (e.g. roads, bridges, tunnels, rail lines) and our three dimensional gridded cities.
via Urban Life and a Microscopic Attention | Sustainable Cities Collective.
Savills’ Report on the World’s 12 key cities: worth taking the time to read.
14h2-world-cities-report-en.pdf
We are living in the midst of the urban century. Though it is common knowledge that the world is urbanizing, it can be striking to visualize this growth on a map. This animation from Unicef maps countries’ urban populations from 1950 to 2050, and shows that urbanization is a global phenomenon set to continue for decades:
Maps and Measurements of the Expansion of Cities | Sustainable Cities Collective.
Herbert Marcuse: “The housing crisis doesn’t exist because the system isn’t working. It exists because that’s the way the system works.”
There is a far cheaper option though: giving homeless people housing and supportive services. The study found that it would cost taxpayers just $10,051 per homeless person to give them a permanent place to live and services like job training and health care. That figure is 68 percent less than the public currently spends by allowing homeless people to remain on the streets. If central Florida took the permanent supportive housing approach, it could save $350 million over the next decade.
via Leaving Homeless Person On The Streets: $31,065. Giving Them Housing: $10,051. | ThinkProgress.
About 60 percent of the world’s population lives along estuaries and coastal areas Of the 32 largest cities in the world, 22 are located on estuaries 90 percent of Europe’s international trade passes through estuaries and their adjacent ports Coastal recreation and tourism generate between $8-$12 billion per year in the United States alone Often called the “nurseries of the sea,” estuaries provide vital nesting and feeding habitats for many aquatic plants and animals.
The Global Estuaries Forum brings together public institutions, the private sector, researchers, and NGOs from around the globe in an effort discuss and meet the pressing and immediate challenges facing our world’s most important estuaries. Follow on Twitter at @EstuariesForum.
