Transit funding is one of the most widely debated topics in urban politics today, especially across party lines. While liberals tend to espouse public transit and its many economic and social benefits, conservatives often question the viability of having the federal government fund mass transit. The Obama administration has spent half a billion dollars trying

On Tuesday, President Obama signed the massive $1.1 Trillion Omnibus Spending Bill that Congress passed last week. This spending bill will fund government agencies through the end of fiscal year 2015. Many of us were concerned about what the Republican Congress would mean for transportation funding, and now we have a more concrete idea of

The prevalence of bike culture has grown tremendously in the past few decades, and many cities are taking initiatives to promote biking. The health consequences of living in places that aren’t walkable or bikeable have long been established, but there are economic incentives for promoting biking as well. For instance, it costs about $500 a

Yesterday we talked about the numerous benefits of developing dense, walkable urbanism. In addition to the walkability of urban design, another topic that is widely debated is the very character of urban design. Some feel that successful urbanism is actually created with experimentation and adjustment, and that having a single developer designing a neighborhood is

Today we’re going to talk about the benefits of walkable urbanism. Dense, walkable urbanism is one of the mantras of modern urban planning, but is there actually evidence that it’s any better than other forms of urbanism? After all, the suburbs that most planners now decry were once considered the pinnacle of American neighborhood development.

Over the past couple of days we’ve talked a lot about how persistent poverty might be just as big a problem as gentrification. Today I’d like to touch upon the topic of affordable housing, which is one of the biggest concerns that people have when they discuss gentrification. One of the major issues that people

Building on yesterday’s discussion of how persistent poverty may be an even bigger problem than the gentrification that dominates the discourse on modern urban issues, let’s get into the details of why poverty needs to be addressed more while discussing urban issues in the US. This is not a dispute over whether or not gentrification

Many of the articles we’ve posted lately have dealt with the super heated topic of Gentrification. With gentrification being one of the most pervasive topics in urban planning discussions, getting a comprehensive understanding of the many different sides to the arguments can be quite a task.  City Commentary has done a great job rounding up

The Overhead Wire Blog:  In an attempt to take some of the articles we post and create a narrative, we want to share some of the connections that we come across as we read.  I’m hoping we can pull out some of the important parts of the articles we cover and connect them in a