This is a great story. I love what these guys are doing. But the takeaway shouldn’t be that we need to enable more people to clean their streets. Keeping our streets clean is the city’s job and one that Philly has failed at. This is a basic function of a city govt! www.inquirer.com/columnists/k...

By capturing how taxable property wealth is shielded from redistributive taxation by local boundaries, we also identify specific jurisdictions—what we term “municipal tax havens” & “fiscal deserts”—where per capita property wealth is many times greater or less than their respective metro averages.

That is why our visualization is different from familiar maps showing neighborhood wealth, though they might initially look similar (particularly in highly-fragmented metro areas). This jurisdictional variation has never before been quantified at scale, or visualized in this way.

What is unique about our measure is that we aggregate wealth at the level of the municipality: the funding base for many critical public services. This allows us to capture the important difference between (1) a *wealthy neighborhood* in a larger municipality, and (2) a *wealthy municipality*

We find significant variation in tax base inequality across metropolitan areas in the US—substantially driven by local government law, as state/regional variation in jurisdictional fragmentation interacts with (by spatially overlapping onto) different levels of economic segregation:

This reminded me of @jongeeting.bsky.social's article (with reference to @zajic.com) about how we should aim to have 2 million Philadelphians. Jon's timeline for that was 2040, but since this long-term planning targets 2050, we should set the goal to 3 million! www.phila3-0.org/2_million_ph...

🚨We analyzed 138 million geocoded property tax records to quantify how municipal boundaries spatially overlap onto economic segregation in every US metro area—creating disparities in localities’ ability to fund public goods. And we made an interactive map of our results! [1/16]

A major problem for PA, and Philly in particular

A fun thing about single stair is that when you ask people defending the status quo on safety grounds to make a judgment call about whether the small buildings that would be allowed under the proposed reforms are more dangerous than the big ones we currently allow they get mad and refuse to answer.

In an effort to remain one of the worst Councilmembers, Cindy Bass is filing an appeal to prevent the replacement of this non-historic 1940s airlite into 13 new homes, which is even by-right legal under zoning. This is why we have a housing crisis Mayor Parker! phila.legistar.com/LegislationD...

New Marron survey of 400+ subway lines across the world from London to Paris to Shanghai finds just 6% still use two-person train operation, which would be required by a TWU-backed bill. “It doesn’t really matter to us what the data shows,” says TWU boss Samuelsen www.nytimes.com/2025/11/13/n...

Giving this Substack subscriber chat feature a try for the Philly City Council H.O.M.E. bond meeting this morning, on the BPN Substack. If you're watching the hearing in-person or online, join the chat: substack.com/chat/6096064

There were a lot of great YIMBY municipal and judicial wins in PA’s 2025 elections. Let me know what I missed! open.substack.com/pub/buildphi...

Chief Justice Roberts is out. Says the major questions doctrine pretty clearly applies here; the tariffs simply can't survive that. Looks like five pretty clear votes against Trump. And we STILL haven't gotten to Gorsuch...

I won!!

Hannity spinning so hard right now. Claiming it’s a good sign that GOP candidates are not doing even worse than they are. (Which…don’t hold your breath Sean)

this is genuinely wild

It looks like this election is going to be a massive reality check for the people who have been insisting that "New Jersey is becoming a red state". That was always a load of crap.

The New Jersey Republican state assembly minority looks like it is going to get absolutely decimated from this election. They are losing state assembly reps in the north and the south.

I thought there might be some interesting takes to be dug out of state assembly races in New Jersey tonight, but, not really. The story seems to be that Republicans are getting their clocks cleaned all over the state...just looks like a massive blue wave. www.nj.com/politics/202...

All YIMBY ballot measures are currently winning in NYC by 10-point margins at least

more the merrier! www.inquirer.com/food/restaur...

Reminded of Philadelphia's partial open-minded attitude during the Zoning Code Commission reforms. Really don't want the Overton window closed here!

Love the “just try stuff” attitude from Baltimore planning officials, who unanimously recommended @electryandorsey.bsky.social’s land use reform package www.baltimorebrew.com/2025/10/31/a...

perfect. no notes.

I wrote about the Preservation Alliance’s recent economic impact report. Contrary to the media narrative and some of the quotes, it doesn’t say anything causal about preservation laws’ impact on population growth or housing or any of that

On Friday, I'm talking with a transit expert about the authority governors have to shift the final year of Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill funding away from highways, to EVs, transit, & pedestrians. Many governors do not know they have this authority! And this year is a crucial window! Questions?

Leslie Richards will be our guest for BPN policy lunch this Friday open.substack.com/pub/buildphi...

It’s just one city board, but I’m pumped that Mayor Parker threw down the gauntlet on Turn the Key and replaced some unreliable TTK voters on there. That’s pro-housing political leadership open.substack.com/pub/buildphi...

Important to remember that not only did we pass #SB79, the biggest transit-oriented upzoning bill ever, we also passed a clean CEQA exemption for new multifamily infill housing. This is, bar none, the biggest year in state action on housing policy reform in California history. Not even close.

lol the degrowth “left” is praising Trump for killing solar projects hard to think of a more embarrassing ideology tbh

If you think about it, it's unbelievably frustrating that the 2nd-poorest big city in the US authorized $800M in bond money for housing and the politicians managing it are basically oblivious to very obvious success stories in peer cities

"If we get this right, a new revolving loan fund could become a feeder for PHA’s widely-celebrated acquisition strategy, creating a steady pipeline of new buildings for them to buy, and a new source of revenue to maintain their scattered site portfolio."

In this house, we believe in the original Parker campaign pledge to literally build 30,000 new units of housing open.substack.com/pub/buildphi...

PA should build a lot more housing so PA doesn’t lose out in reapportionment again in 2030. The number we need to hit: 130,000 more homes above-baseline. That’s the same number Gov Shapiro says we need to hit to dig out of the statewide housing shortage thephiladelphiacitizen.org/the-key-to-p...

What's cool about these library–housing projects is that they leverage publicly owned land to: —Provide the space for dozens to hundreds of new housing units. —Create brand-new library facilities, absolutely necessary at a time when resources for libraries are declining.

I thought CM Young was off-base trying to graft an affordable housing project onto the ready-to-go Cecil B. Moore library restoration project, but it was purely because of the last-minute timing and how it would have delayed the library project while they chased more funding

Intro to PJM policy lunch this Friday at Pipeline Philly buildphillynow.substack.com/p/policy-lun...

it's so blindingly obvious that we should do this. it would instantly transform the Philly area into one of the most accessible metropolitan areas in the country. and yet our politicians don't even seem to realize it's a possibility...

Does this assume status quo crew levels, or some efficiencies (and if so, what)?

Deeply transformative if they can get the funding to do it right. Would fundamentally change how we get around the city.

SEPTA released some info about their Reimagining Regional Rail reform proposal on a TRB webinar. Some details on the Build Philly Now Substack buildphillynow.substack.com/p/sneak-peek...

We have a great couple of energy-themed policy lunches coming up starting this Friday 10/3 with Christine Knapp (ex-Biden DOE), and on 10/10 with Zach Greene doing an intro to PJM and energy markets buildphillynow.substack.com/p/policy-lun...

There is so little transparency on how shadow docket decisions are made that I'm tempted to read into Kagan's note that the justices didn't get to deliberate in conference. Do they get to for some applications? Maybe, maybe not www.courthousenews.com/supreme-cour...

BREAKING: Supreme Court lets Trump unilaterally freeze billions in congressionally appropriated foreign aid money apparent 6-3 vote with liberals in dissent @courthousenews.bsky.social

The first Chicago River swim in 98 years! The water is now clean enough. Congratulations to the hundreds of swimmers completing the swim this morning!

Probably the only American city with through-running legacy regional rail and one of the few with a quasi-Stadtbahn though, which is cool

Philly is the classic case of “80% of the infra to be a first-rate transit city aaaaaaand then job sprawl and the 70s-90s happened“

Since 2023 I’ve been doing less newsletter writing, and spending more time doing politics to rebuild the Growth Machine coalition in Philly. I’m going to be writing more about our issues—housing, infrastructure, and energy—at the new Build Philly Now Substack open.substack.com/pub/buildphi...