Can’t help but notice the rules: “Be honest. Be kind.” 🤷‍♂️

I wrote something (brief) about valuing activism and activists in the face of denigration by those in power. dans-newsletter-cfccf2.beehiiv.com/p/valuing-ur...

Absolutely shocking how easy this is.

I wrote something (brief) about valuing activism and activists in the face of denigration by those in power. dans-newsletter-cfccf2.beehiiv.com/p/valuing-ur...

Academics on Bluesky: “AI is destroying teaching and scholarship.” Deans and administrators on Linked-In: “AI provides a world of amazing possibilities for the future of higher education.”

Looking forward to keynoting the 2026 International Planning History Society Conference on Monday, July 20 in Atlanta at Georgia Tech. Tentative title for the talk is: "The 'Beginning of the end' for the Atlanta Way? Not so fast." design.gatech.edu/iphs2026#intro design.gatech.edu/iphs2026/spe...

And Stephen Owens just called out the city's rhetoric about the TAD/TIF extension not hurting the schools: "we can't lie and say no money is coming from schools..."

Alex Carmadelle: (me paraphrasing) City of Atlanta needs to start taxing corporate properties at near market value (as required by law, rather than closer to 60%) instead of using TAD/TIFs that divert dollars from schools and local services.

Ken Zeff, member of city's school board, on why he's against extending Atlanta's TADs tonight: "I could not vote for taking money from kids & use it for these (tax increment financing/TAD) projects...I couldn't get on board with that." "If you want to provide preschool, let us (schools) do that."

Now do (also) attacking Iran and driving immigrant workers out of and away from the country.

Looking forward to keynoting the 2026 International Planning History Society Conference on Monday, July 20 in Atlanta at Georgia Tech. Tentative title for the talk is: "The 'Beginning of the end' for the Atlanta Way? Not so fast." design.gatech.edu/iphs2026#intro design.gatech.edu/iphs2026/spe...

Ah, more vitriol from the Mayor of Atlanta against folks who dare to question a multibillion dollar, multidecade tax increment financing plan. “CopCity era vibes indeed” And @atlpresscollective.com recalls his tirade against me last year. Some excerpts atlpresscollective.indiegraf.com/index.php

For a deeper dive into how this operationalizes and structures our financial markets — reconstructing and reinforcing inequality, I’d strongly recommend Katharina Pistor’s The Code of Capital.

It would do scientists well to learn more about policy. This is a shockingly naive way to understand the current political and policy changes occurring in science

The amount the US spends on attacking countries that pose no threat to us and causing mass death is obscene. We could spend money on making the world a better place. Instead, we spend it on making it worse. www.politico.com/news/2026/05...

But — SF Mayor Daniel Lurie has a different idea of "public safety." Kill off the jobs of 105 SF pretrial staff with lived experience in the system. Trust. Replace them with: 27 armed Adult Probation officers. With one "solution" -- punishment (violence, jail, prison).

Here's what's happening: Quietly, hoping no one will notice, SF Mayor Daniel Lurie is dissolving SF Pretrial—a 50-year community-based public safety program—& handing its entire budget to armed probation officers on July 1. No hearing. No vote on the merits. A scandal.

NEW REPORT: After Chicago shut down ShotSpotter in Sept. 2024, CPD response times to priority 1 calls improved by an average of 4.2 minutes. Read more here: uchicago-justice-project.github.io/chicago_crim...

In the 12 states with available data, the number of children receiving food stamps has fallen by more than 700,000 since the "One Big Beautiful Bill" passed last July www.cbpp.org/blog/sharp-d...

Meanwhile, new report from NYFed finds "a remarkable increase in food insecurity, particularly among lower-educated and lower-income households and households with young children." They added that these families also report a sharp drop in expectations of finding a job.

A new report from researchers at Chicago Appleseed says Eileen O'Neill Burke has reversed years of progress as top prosecutor with policies that have led to harsher charges, more pre-trial detention, and less accountability for cops. Legal reform advocates also give her a failing grade on ICE:

Looking for a publisher for my new book idea, "Data Center Abundance"

Looking for a publisher for my new book idea, "Data Center Abundance"

I guess that period from 2007-2009 was the “Great Downzoning”. 🙃 Missing Middle (2-4 units) production in the US. (* not against MM housing or zoning reform, so don’t @ me please, and yes I see the small uptick in 2024/2025 or so.) eyeonhousing.org/2026/05/mult...

City of Atlanta: “there’s a problem, oh wait, we got a STRIKE FORCE for that! You get a strike force, and you get a strike force, and you get a strike force, and …

I would be disappointed if I wasn’t at least being alluded to. Seriously, one of the many collateral damages from Trump normalization is that now many politicians can just personally attack folks who offer legitimate policy criticism with all kinds of irrelevant & spurious crap. And the media: 🥱

It says a lot about who counts in Atlanta when you consider the three issues where he's really nailed his colors to the mast: 1. “Public safety" center: significant public opposition 2. Beltline rail: overwhelming public support 3. TAD extensions: significant public opposition

I would be disappointed if I wasn’t at least being alluded to. Seriously, one of the many collateral damages from Trump normalization is that now many politicians can just personally attack folks who offer legitimate policy criticism with all kinds of irrelevant & spurious crap. And the media: 🥱

Seriously, the Mayor’s staff stood and applauded him at a committee hearing? Been to a lot of legislative hearings over the last 30+ years, and not sure I’ve seen that level of brown-nosing in public before.

City of Atlanta: “there’s a problem, oh wait, we got a STRIKE FORCE for that! You get a strike force, and you get a strike force, and you get a strike force, and …

Bakhtiari says TADs have greatly benefited District 5, but have also come with great cost. They note that the original families who owned property in Reynoldstown have nearly all been displaced from the neighborhood.

Rereading Kahrl’s excellent book, The Black Tax & it’s again clear that “everything old is new again” as he recalls the underappraisal & undertaxation of commercial property in ‘70s & implications for cities. The context may be different but the issue is basically the same. @julianbene.bsky.social

Rereading Kahrl’s excellent book, The Black Tax & it’s again clear that “everything old is new again” as he recalls the underappraisal & undertaxation of commercial property in ‘70s & implications for cities. The context may be different but the issue is basically the same. @julianbene.bsky.social

Tough life.

So many congratulations to *Dr.* Glenda Krouse-Matute for defending her dissertation for her PhD in Urban Studies this morning. Fabulous work! 👏 (And thanks to Dr. Fei Li for taking over as dissertation advisor/chair after I left GSU.)

“…the upshot is still: Allowing all big development projects to negotiate their own property tax bills, and allowing more of them to siphon off sales taxes as well, could come at an enormous cost to city, county, and Illinois state treasuries.”

This is just racism, based in a total fabrication

NJ Senator @andykimnj.bsky.social pepper sprayed at Newark ICE detention center, which is owned by for-profit corrections company GEO Group. Feel like this should be a big thing. www.nj.com/news/2026/05...

Cartoon by Jeffrey Koterba

Always good to have another reason to root against a pro sports team from New York.

OP-ED: "There is a growing feeling in Bedford-Stuyvesant that the people who built this community are steadily losing their claim to it. The rise in #deedtheft is not incidental to Brooklyn’s transformation. It is one of its clearest warning signs."

Yeah, this is the stuff.

I have been saying for years that Democrats should run against Republicans on the issue of corruption. Make fighting corruption the centerpiece of their hopefully populist campaigns. Well, if they don’t run on corruption this year, against Trump, then they deserve to lose.

All the centrist/conservative Democrats who wanted to allow Abrego Garcia and everyone else Trump sent to CECOT to rot in a slave camp should be embarrassed with themselves and think deeply before saying anything about anything.

Atlanta, Birmingham, Jackson, all come to mind of course. But it’s hard to argue against Detroit being in the mix. Grew up there in 70s when the state and suburbs worked to decimate the city. (For some reading: Hackworth’s Manufacturing Decline & Adams’ The Containment for starters.)

Atlanta, Birmingham, Jackson, all come to mind of course. But it’s hard to argue against Detroit being in the mix. Grew up there in 70s when the state and suburbs worked to decimate the city. (For some reading: Hackworth’s Manufacturing Decline & Adams’ The Containment for starters.)

This is basically what HUD Scott Turner is pushing around the country through HUD’s “Work and Dignity Coalition” Pushing work requirements without going through Congress… www.linkedin.com/posts/hud_an...?

Yes, on a day-to-day basis at least, I prefer to be “ensconced” by (mostly) rational, not openly racist people — many of whom I still have substantive disagreements with— than by vile, openly racist ones. Silly me.

As the Atlanta City Planning Department approaches the finish line on ATL Zoning 2.0 — the long-awaited rewrite of the city’s antiquated zoning code — some local housing advocates fear it will retain much of the same low-density residential framework dictated by the current 44-year-old code.

Need to get me a gig as a consultant who equity-washes bad state and local legislation. Just let me stick in enough equity buzzwords and enough earmarked dollars for key nonprofits, and I will put equity lipstick on your pig.