Liberal Talk Radio

Somewhere in the nexus between voter referenda, free market principles, urban growth formulas and plain-old finger wagging emerges a new American Western philosophy. See, for example, this article in the Phoenix New Times about building the city’s new light rail line:
You, the customer, carry most of the responsibility for preserving the businesses you like that [...]

If you buy that libertarianism, while not a very viable form of actual governance, may be the dominant political ideology that both drives and tempers American politics (as opposed to straight-up conservatism), then this notion doesn’t seem that far fetched:
Can a new, progressive fusionism break out of the current rut? Liberals and libertarians already share [...]

Good piece by Dan Voelpel in the Tacoma News-Tribune on how Portland does the whole new-urban smart-growh thang. Item #1 on the list? Tax Increment Financing, one of the Prof’s favorite ideas.
Turns out that Washington is one of only two states that don’t allow TIF. Weird. Anyway, the point is that [...]

Nearly a decade after the TV show “Frasier” first aired, Seattlites can finally buy an apartment like that:
Some of it is just a matter of rich people deciding downtown living is OK.
Potential buyers hear about the Four Seasons through word of mouth, or from friends and friends of friends, Nyhus said. “There’s a sense of [...]

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar didn’t start out on the right track with his new Harlem neighbors:
New neighbors of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar were crying foul yesterday after the NBA great apparently dumped a huge pile of trash — complete with a pair of old size-17 sneakers — in the front yard of a home next-door to his Harlem brownstone.
“It [...]

A good buddy of mine says that he can feel the rise in housing prices in his gut. “Every day that I wake up, petrified that I haven’t yet bought a house and won’t be able to afford one,” he tells me, only half-jokingly.
It’s a common refrain here in Seattle, where housing prices increase [...]

While traffic gets worse in virtually every North American city, commute times have actually decreased in that urban planning paradise to the North, Vancouver.
In unrelated transit news, a tragic death inside Boston’s Big Dig has people looking for alternative commuting options. Only part of the tunnel is closed, but residents and tourists [...]

Big article on gentrification Seattle’s Central District in the Washington Post:
In Seattle’s Central District, though, racial change is anything but marginal. The non-Hispanic white population in the area jumped from 31 percent in 1990 to 50 percent in 2000, according to the census.
Local demographers say white growth since 2000 has gained momentum, while the percentage [...]

Ken Baer notes an interesting WaPo op-ed by Richard Florida on how to improve Washington, D.C.
Worth a read, especially if you listened to Episode 243 where we talk about the life and legacy of Jane Jacobs.

Today’s Seattle TImes has a good run-down of the current options for the Sonics if they stay in Washington. It was looking like a Seattle-Bellevue showdown until scrappy little south-ender Renton threw its hat into the ring.
The accomanying chart confirms what we all intuitively knew all along: Only 16% of ticket [...]