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What We’re Reading: Unaffordable, Overburdened, Decaying, and Dysfunctional

Stephen Fesler - March 08, 2015

The Puget Sound from above, courtesy of Doc Searls.
The Puget Sound from above, courtesy of Doc Searls.

Making doughnuts: A look at 66 metro regions shows that a inner cities are doing much better than inner suburbs, although a doughnut effect is taking hold.

Disparate tastes: Who knew Girl Scout Cookies differed so greatly in taste and quality depending upon where you live.

Overburdened suburbs: The cost of sprawl is more than twice the cost of compact development.

Getting restructured: Seattle Transit Blog details some of the University Link restructure plan, more to come this week. We covered this earlier in the week.

New micros: A Capitol Hill apartment could soon be converted to microhousing.

You’re all wrong: Why the left and the right are both wrong on affordable housing.

Octopus down!: An octopus at the Seattle Aquarium almost got away. Almost. Meanwhile, the Seattle City Council will let the Woodland Park elephants move to Oklahoma ($).

Challenging affordability: Developers mount a challenge to stop the City of Seattle from adopting a linkage fee on new development.

An inconsistency: A city council candidate that wants to stop foreclosure on homes bought a foreclosed home.

Violators beware: Parking in bike lane? You might just find your car with bike lane paint on it in Germany.

Sprawl fallout: How sprawl is deeply hurting cities like Tacoma in Pierce County.

Stalling out: Seattle’s bike plummeting bike collision rate may be stalling out.

Still No. 1: New York still rounds out the top for the most economically powerful city in the world, check out the rankings.

Saving the rentals: Berlin is banning rental conversions to condos because the supply of rentals is dwindling quickly.

Launching the streetcar: City officials want to get the streetcar on First Hill moving soon, and to do that, they plan to incentivize the manufacture to expedite delivery ($).

Not good enough: The Design Review Board wants to see a better plan for the Whole Foods block in First Hill.

Designing Capitol Hill: How the Pike Pine Urban Neighborhood Council fits into the planning process for historic Capitol Hill. Is there really a part for them to play?

Transpo failure: The brief synopsis of the politics at play in the Washington State Legislature for a transportation package.

Rent burdened: Understanding New York City’s rent affordability problem.