Search Results for: gentrification

Business is booming at the Roadrunner Grab’n’Go deli outside Joshua Tree national park. Demand for sandwiches, mezze boxes and local vegan cheese has remained high through the summer, even as temperatures soar in a desert landscape that now attracts more than three million visitors each year. But the shop’s co-owner, Merilee Kuchon, has a problem. … Continue reading “can we find a better word than “gentrification” to describe this?”

This hit home with me, the idea that gentrification and displacement are somehow inevitable, as relentless and predictable as the tides when we know they are manmade, completely artificial and preventable. Shearer is increasingly involved with efforts to protect neighbors from displacement. He bought his first home in the North Oak Cliff neighborhood of Winnetka … Continue reading “the perceived inevitability of gentrification”

I have written about this before. What else can I find to say about it? Gentrification has a definition — But it doesn’t talk about the causes, much as newspapers simply write about it as if it was a fact of nature, like the tides or phases of the moon. But it does have a … Continue reading “gentrification”

Why do the super-rich treat affordable housing in the Bronx as a lucrative asset class? Because there is no such thing as affordable housing without affordable land and the Bronx is not where I would look for it… Recapture the value of the land through a ground rent or land value tax and you break … Continue reading “there is no such thing as affordable housing without affordable land”

Take a look at the two homes below and see if you can guess which of them is worth more, in the eyes of the county property assessor: Did you guess the one in residential neighborhood with the lush plantings, a stellar example of Seattle’s celebrated single family homes? Nope. They are valued the same: … Continue reading “let’s talk about “the highest and best use” of land”

Montana is the 4th largest US state, at 145,552 square miles, and the 44th largest in population with 1,085,407, 48th in density. So why is there a housing crisis in Bozeman? In June, the median sale price for a single-family home in Bozeman – a county of 115,000 inhabitants – was $720,000, up 49% from … Continue reading “inequality and inflation have nothing to do with money supply or interest rates: it’s the land supply.”

Climate scientists and urban planners increasingly suggest that one of the most impactful ways to slash greenhouse gas emissions is to make cities denser. This change, scientists have calculated, is even more impactful than installing solar panels on all new constructions or retrofitting old buildings with energy-saving technologies. Residents of cities like San Francisco, Chicago, … Continue reading “negotiating with terrorists”

This article explains a lot of why proximity — often mislabeled as “location” — matters. These trading floors are in the most expensive cities in the world — New York, London, Paris, Tokyo — and yet in the midst of the convulsions of 2020, they increased their footprint. They understand the value of proximity, of … Continue reading “the value of location”