An excellent interactive map of New York City with income levels for various neighborhoods in reference to affordable housing. Don’t even click on the Upper East Side. [Source: Envisioning Development: What is Affordable Housing?]
The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.One of the best explanations of the current credit crisis. It shows how ordinary homeowners defaulting aren’t solely to blame and the problems are systemic tracing back to the lowering of the Fed rate and repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 that allowed creation of [...]
“Try this experiment. Go knock on someone’s door in West Oakland, Watts or Newark and say: ‘We gotta really big problem!’ They say: ‘We do? We do?’ ‘Yeah, we gotta really big problem!’ ‘We do? We do?’ ‘Yeah, we gotta save the polar bears! You may not make it out of this neighborhood alive, but [...]
“The world now has more regional trade schemes than countries” [via] – from Paul Collier’s The Bottom Billion.
You know a country has too much money when they build a hundred acre park covered with lush green grass in the middle of a desert or for that matter, even a skiing slope. Dubai is no stranger to ostentatious spending but compared to its equally rich cousins in the Middle East, the rulers of [...]
Attempts to resolve poverty and to grant economic justice has been the aim of planning ever since Charles Booth’s studies in London have shown it as a bane to the urbanscape. Planners have oscillated between objectives of eliminating poverty from the neighborhood and eliminating poverty from the people; both of which claim to achieve common [...]
The Houston-Galveston corridor is one of the busiest in terms of rush hour traffic as people living in Houston commute everyday along I-45 to their jobs in the oil and gas industry on the coast. But hope arises for reducing the growth in number of vehicles on this already-congested stretch of roadway with the proposal [...]
In spite of the fact that humans occupy less than 1% of the total land available on Earth, land scarcity is an omnipresent urban reality. Partly due to urban aggregation behavior and availability of conducive habitable spaces, the fight for space especially in urban areas has been intense. Be it the ever-growing slums in Mumbai [...]
In Queens, the median income among black households, nearing $52,000 a year, has surpassed that of whites in 2005, an analysis of new census data shows. No other county in the country with a population over 65,000 can make that claim. New York Times reports on this unique country in the United States where the [...]
Oslo and London head the list. But surprisingly, my hometown Mumbai is among the cheapest place to live in. To think that everyone out there complains how expensive it is. Delhi, yet another Indian metro was also among the bottom five cities. Update: Fast forward to 2007, “Moscow is the world’s most expensive city for [...]
Zero down! Zero percent interest until 2007!! Does this sound familar to you? I bet it does because the glut of supply far outstrips the demand of certain products such as furniture or GM gas-guzzling trucks. Both products have high markups allowing them to offer deep discounts and yet managing to make a profit off [...]
The common rant against compact or dense living is that it is not what people want. People rather prefer one-acre lots that have ample backyard space for their children to play and two-car garages to park their sedan and minivan/SUV/truck respectively. Every individual in the family needs his or her private space and in turn [...]
“The prosperity of a nation is by counting the number of cars on the roads. Therefore there should not be cyclists travelling long distances and traffic should be made homogenous,” The above priceless quote was uttered by Delhi’s Engineer-in-Chief, R Subramaniam. I am amazed that such a person with absolutely no knowledge of city form [...]
Economics and Urban Design! This course seems interesting. If there is any course I would teach, it might just be this one. Hope someone at TAMU comes up with something similar while I am here. [via]
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