Great episode of a great podcast. Check it out!

“It seems that Stringer Bell is worse than a drug dealer.” “He’s a developer.”

Even Lowly Worm notices that firefighters will take any excuse to tear down a door

What movie do you consider “perfect?”

I enjoyed @mattyglesias.bsky.social’s debate with Oren Cass on the American Compass podcast. Matt said Abundance is reevaluating localism and state capacity, but unlike the New Right says, “we don’t need to reevaluate David Ricardo.” [👏👏👏 the audience is jumping up and down and cheering wildly 👏👏👏]

Parenting in high-density neighborhoods is pretty sweet. a bunch of restaurants and stores that are walkable for a toddler > a yard

Today, the Center for Building published “Beyond Zoning” by John Zeanah, Memphis’s Chief of Development and Infrastructure. He chronicles the non-zoning barriers faced by Malone Commons, a low-rise multifam/mixed-use project, and how they worked through them www.centerforbuilding.org/publication/...

Late Night Infill Friday. I just learned about this YIGBY project, an LDS church with a large meetinghouse space plus 342 apartments in Crystal City.

This is a fun little read for people who are interested in the intersection of free range kids and the built environment. But wow, this take that phones would help get kids away from TVs did not age well

At the YIMBYtown inclusionary zoning debate we got to hear @charlescgardner.bsky.social and my term “anti-nexus” in the wild 🫰🫰🫰🫰🫰 www.mercatus.org/research/ami...

These characteristic wooden domestic water tanks in NYC help ensure that at least 8 psi/0.6 bar of water pressure is maintained at plumbing fixtures in the building below. Water is pumped from the lower pressure water mains below the street to the elevated tank using an electric transfer pump.

Infill Friday. About 30 apartments are almost done at the site of my former rowhouse and four of its neighbors in NE DC. Exterior second stairs are a common thing for midrise infill in DC.

Four years ago, Portland did something almost no other city has: made it legal to live in a backyard home on wheels. Today at @sightline.org, @citizen-cate.bsky.social has three stories of the consequences. www.sightline.org/2025/09/11/h...

Super interesting – prefabricated walls for this senior housing project in Germany (20 units and an elevator, obviously, despite only being three stories and 13,000 sq. ft.), using Wienerberger/Schlagmann engineered bricks www.heinze.de/architekturo...

Great piece on the intersection of housing, demographics, and schools in Australian cities by Katie Roberts-Hull. What's worse for neighborhood incumbents than school crowding? School closures. inflectionpoints.work/articles/the...

Found some material for Illinois’ banned books list @isanobody.bsky.social

Great piece by @jennyschuetz.bsky.social on the important role that randomness plays in state housing reform. Gotta keep throwing educated spaghetti in the pro-housing direction: www.mercatus.org/research/pol...

Not too sure about this list. I wouldn’t call Bin 707 the best restaurant in Mesa County let alone, like, better than every restaurant in South Carolina??

My monthly thx you for recognizing the hard work of Team Metro delivering the service that fuels our national leading growth! I’ll set an alarm for next month!

Of the many great things about the Baltimore Orioles, one is that they love to shoot off daytime fireworks. I think my crew is 4/4 daytime fireworks at Camden Yards.

Lawsuits trying to overturn upzoning are a problem across the country, but its seems especially bad in Virginia, where we have three in process right now

morrow's dissertation was so eye opening. at one point i found a planning doc from LA in the 1910s that claimed the capacity could have been over 20 million if the density of downtown was allowed to spread

Even though this was the excuse to downzone DC in 1958, its assumption of large HH sizes means it projected high populations: 1M residents in DC in 1980. "Moderate densities" of 35/gross acre in DC's SFH n'hoods = 22,400/sq mi = 3X what's there today ggwash.org/view/74251/d...

Great post from @kevinerdmann.bsky.social on the postwar downzonings that made the first round of zoning look super permissive. Bluesky hasn’t seen enough of this chart. kevinerdmann.substack.com/p/the-end-of...

Dense apartment buildings historically gave middle-class people a chance to live in upper-class single-family mansion districts they could never afford otherwise. Sherman Pl, JC Heights

My four year olds are interested in science generally, specifically 1) skeletons, and 2) outer space. These interests have merged into this never-ending conversation: If we stopped having gravity, we would float off into space and turn into skeletons because we don’t have space suits

New from me, a summary of Montana's recent housing policy wins, which are nearly as impressive as the 2023 Montana Miracle: www.governing.com/urban/what-m...

Just hearing Lina Khan’s voice for the first time, and she sounds uncannily like AOC

I wrote a report for a Mount Laurel objection where the town wrote a 'plan' that basically said they weren't going to plan for affordable housing. It's fun to depart from serious planner review voice and just let it rip.

The U.S. population might decline in 2025 for the first time ever. This could be bad for lots of things, including the option of retirement. www.derekthompson.org/p/the-us-pop...

Modesto CM Chris Ricci endorses SB 79 as a solution to Central Valley sprawl and super-commuting: "When one region’s housing failures force over 100,000 people into extreme commutes, that’s no longer a local problem—it’s a statewide crisis that demands statewide solutions."

This post about my new ADU policy brief with Kol Peterson includes an image file with the complete data on how state policies vary: marketurbanism.com/2025/08/29/s...

Nice list of housing reforms from @ebwhamilton.bsky.social and others in this new report. Ironic that Utah's governor and his housing guy have their names on this report when they've helped undo one of these reforms in the city where I live.

One of the big selling points of model building codes is that they can lead to uniform rules across the country. But this doesn’t work when almost every state/locality wants to put their own spin on things. This was one cause leading to a preemptive federal building code for manufactured housing.

Here's Dallas map for SB840: gray areas are "probably applies" green is "definitely applies".

"Worry about yourself" is good advice that more people should take www.theargumentmag.com/p/the-forgot...

Bruised back of hand and extremely swollen ankles? Sounds to me like Trump recently delivered twins

Sort of a hallmark of centrally planned economies to have inefficient division of labor right?

Connecticut’s ADU law is, unfortunately, remarkably weak Given our massive minimum lot sizes across the state (our state’s greatest natural resource is excess backyard), ADU reform should be a slam dunk for the state Great target for future years in the general assembly

For the third year, I have an analysis out of all of the state laws legalizing accessory dwelling units. This year's analysis is bigger and better than ever, thanks to collaboration with Kol Peterson: www.mercatus.org/research/pol...

While blue states keep scuttling pro-housing legislation, or ruining it with "everything bagel" provisions, red states—from a baseline of already building lots of greenfield housing—are increasingly passing clean legislation to legalize infill. My latest: www.city-journal.org/article/home...

Note that these tenement laws from more than a century ago at least rhyme with the differences between the IRC and the IBC today.

From Stuck! by @yappelbaum.bsky.social, some great history on U.S. building codes and Lawrence Veiller's work on tenement laws:

OH at the National Zoo: The tortillas are what make Cactus Cantina so good. 🤯🤯🤯

Infill Friday. Clinic + parking lot —> 5-over-1 in NE DC. Seems like this project has gone pretty fast, in the scheme of things.

I do not think this device is good to use in a tipping-heavy culture.

It seems that everywhere else in the world is ok with smaller water heaters but Americans (and the designers that specify them) think they need something 4 times the size, usually requiring a dedicated closet. Worse for space, cost, energy, and waterborne pathogen risk (legionella and pseudomonas).

Colorado school siting guidelines call for "minimizing parking to reduce heat island effect and discourage us of individual automobiles" but also 3 parking spaces per elementary and middle school classrooms. www.sos.state.co.us/CCR/Generate... 🤔

Last week's plunge in DC restaurant reservations appears to be an artifact of a bad year-over-year comparison. Restaurant Week 2024: Aug 12–18 Restaurant Week 2025: Aug 18–24 You would expect reservations to dive for the off week then rebound. That's what happened. www.wusa9.com/article/news...

ED1 was incredible. Proved beyond any doubt that the LA establishment wants to grandstand about homelessness and housing without actually doing anything. The minute that housing developers called her bluff and proposed a ton of 100% affordable units, she began a furious retreat.