MLewyn's blog

This post is part of a new series on the CNU Salons, CITY SPOTLIGHT. City Spotlight shines a light on the latest news, developments and initiatives occurring in cities and towns where CNU members live and work.

National Review's website contains an article accusing President Obama of "Burning Down the Suburbs."  The article's basic claim is in the first paragraph: "Obama is a longtime supporter of “regionalism,” the idea that the suburbs should be folded into the cities, merging schools, housing, transportation, and above all taxation."'

The Transport Politic blog has a post on Paul Ryan's anti-transit voting record, and concludes that "we should be clear about what direction the United States may head after November’s election." I disagree, for two reasons.

When a city recovers from the urban decline of the late 20th century, there is often a lot of media blather about the evils of gentrification.  According to gentriphobes, working-class (mostly black) people lived together in peace and harmony before the onslaught of (mostly white) hipsters and yuppies drove up rents.

When listening to transit critics, I sometimes see the following arguments:

1. density doesn't increase transit ridership 

2.  My city/suburb just isn't dense enough for better transit.

I don't see how both arguments can be true. 

A common justification for downzoning is "community character' - the idea that a given place has a (usually suburban) character, and that this "character" justifies legal rules freezing the status quo in place.

I was taking a long-distance bus to my parents' house in Atlanta and we had a layover in Charlotte, NC.  I noticed a couple of things that I thought were fairly impressive:

First, all of the region's bus schedules were in the Greyhound station.  Since bus riders are (I suspect) pretty likely to be using public transit once they arrive in town, I thought this was a pretty good idea.  (Though a regionwide bus map in the station would be still better).

The Pew Research Center just came out with a much-touted new study showing that American neighborhoods are becoming more economically segregated (or at least purporting to show this) 

Yesterday, the voters of ten Atlanta counties voted "no" in a referendum on a regional sales tax to expand both roads and public transit.  The new tax was favored by the region's business establishment, and opposed by groups as varied as the Sierra Club and local Tea Party groups.

I recently ran across one of the CNU 20 panels on Youtube.  As useful as it was, I'm not sure how many hours I want to spend in front of a computer screen trying to keep my attention on a video presentation.  I started to wonder: is there a way for people to access CNU panels without spending hours on Youtube?