The Goodspeed Update

The weekly newsletter circulated by my representative on the D.C. Council, Jack Evans, contains this personal plea for community members to attend an upcoming zoning hearing regarding a mixed-use redevelopment of the O Street Market:
O Street Market needs support from residents
The DC Zoning Commission will hold a Public Hearing on the O Street Market project […]

For decades, zoning codes in American cities have required new buildings to provide a minimum number of parking spaces. The Washington, D.C. region is no exception, and our zoning codes contain a hodgepodge of requirements resulting in legally mandated parking spaces from Clarksburg to Springfield. A new book causing waves in the urban planning profession has put these requirements in the spotlight, arguing they have resulted in nothing less than a total “planning disaster” for American cities.

Read more to find out why Professor Shoup thinks our parking policies have “debased” our cities, what he thinks we should do about it, and how D.C. officials are re-thinking their parking policies.

I attended Campus Progress’s National Student Conference in 2005, where I heard Bill Clinton give a keynote address on the topic of how progressives can win again. Whatever you think of Clinton, you must concede his knack for electoral victory. The conference took place at a depressing time for many Democrats - Senator John Kerry […]

I’ve written before about potential applications of Web 2.0 to the field of urban development. On Planetizen, I described some of the ways the new tools could be used to inform and engage the public in urban planning issues. On this blog last August, I described how a well-designed interactive website could help the city […]

Since my original post on the topic way back in 2006, the D.C. urban and real estate blogosphere has evolved somewhat. However, only recently were there enough changes to convince me the topic deserved to be revisited.

The blog I co-founded about urban development issues in and around College Park, Maryland, Rethink College Park, has been named one of the web’s Top 10 Urban Planning, Design, and Development websites by the planning portal Planetizen. The award recognizes the hard work and support of all the site’s contributors and others who have provided […]