I wrote about my white whale, the Neighborhood Commercial Overlay in Fishtown and Northern Liberties, which doubles the amount of time it takes to open a restaurant. The ZBA approves 97% of these cases, making it more like a toll booth than a gate

Eye-popping margins in the Pennsylvania special elections today: —Democrats won HD94 by 63 points. (Harris won it by 30 in 2024.) —Democrats won HD42 by 35 points. (Harris won it by 17 in 2024.) [The 2024 numbers are via the essential @the-downballot.com].

I personally know two separate people who just won neighborhood races By Applying. Both were relatively shocked

I wrote for @thephilacitizen.bsky.social about how uncompetitive the Philly committee person elections really are. Don’t be afraid to just go for it!

Trump: "I can do anything I want to do to them ... I'm allowed to destroy the country."

Running for a committee person seat in Philly, or thinking about it? I’ve been making some cool Philly CP election tools for 5th Square with Claude. Sign up on their CP interest form to get access docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

We gotta reform the PHC's exterior scope to permanant facade elements only

A thing that annoys me about the Axios newsletter is that the tone is consistently “I am one of the top experts on this thing I learned about five minutes ago.” Also that they have 280 sources in the White House but their only source on the left is Rep. Capitulate Middle (D).

Dude is quickly climbing the ranks of Most Dangerous Man Alive

Read @ninthhostage.bsky.social on last Friday’s Philadelphia Historical Commission meeting, where the Commission decided a designation case for a 1920’s movie theater in Frankford, among other things open.substack.com/pub/buildphi...

Example interurban/intercity cases will include: Fast, rapid electric service linking Chicago-Milwaukee-Madison; Chicago-Springfield-St. Louis; Chicago-Kalamazoo-Ann Arbor-Detroit; Philadelphia-Reading; Philadelphia-Bethlehem; NY-Scranton.

Our goals: - Create a positive vision of what investing in transit can deliver for Jersey, Philly and Chicagoland, delivering much faster commutes and much improved connectivity - Illustrate how it opens the door for modern interurban service that extend beyond the megalopolises to nearby cities

Very excited to say that the stars have aligned and NYU Marron/Transit Costs Project have landed a grant that will fund a second edition of Momentum, which will apply the high-throughput framework to major regional rail networks beyond the NY area. Our three big new cases: - NJT - SEPTA - METRA

This stat (below) really goes to show that 👏🏼traffic 👏🏼deaths 👏🏼are 👏🏼preventable 👏🏼 People who live in Philadelphia are now almost 3Xs more likely to be killed in traffic than those who live in NYC (where real progress has been made to Vision Zero goals) www.axios.com/local/philad...

Washington, DC's City Council is hearing its single-stair building now. You can find written testimony and a link to the Zoom feed here. The Department of Buildings' testimony is *very* positive. I'll be testifying at some point as well lims.dccouncil.gov/Hearings/hea...

After practicing in Chicago for 12 years (and in very urban settings in New Jersey before that), three things really strike me about Philadelphia. 1) I see many more people with bullets in them 2) I see many more pedestrians struck by cars 3) I see many more cyclists struck by cars

"Weiss is planning to tell her newsroom Tuesday that she intends to hire approximately 18 paid commentators and that she only wants top-flight performers committed to her approach to stick around. Weiss is also expected to make significant cuts to the newsroom." www.npr.org/2026/01/27/n...

Signs about the history of slavery in the U.S. and the 9 people George Washington enslaved are being removed right now at the President’s House Site in Philadelphia, across from Independence Hall, months after the Trump administration threatend to do so. How far we have not come in 250 years.

The United States has the fewest elevators in the rich world, with Canada only a bit ahead. We teamed up with @uytaelee.bsky.social of About Here Videos to investigate why, exactly, North America sucks at elevators.

I count 10 cities in 2025 that are on track to have the fewest murders since at least 1970. Newark is on pace to have the fewest murders since 1956 (though only have data through Oct this year) and San Francisco is on pace to have the fewest murders since 1942.

Philly should follow this rule and empower the Planning Commission to grant all needed special exceptions short of complete variances @jongeeting.bsky.social

This sheet is the kicker that explains it. The occupant load per staircase is so much higher in the typical DLC building

This study was funded by the legislature after advocacy by @moreneighbors.org, @net0builder.bsky.social, and my org. It's a bombshell finding, and it shows that small amounts of government funding for code research – this one cost just $225k, same as one mid-rise stairway! – yields big results.

They also compared the mid-rise single-stair building to a code-compliant low-rise single-stair building. They found slightly more risk, easily mitigated with smoke detectors in the corridor OR improved inspections. This is the finding they highlighted, and the direction they are pushing in.

Consultants contracted by Minnesota found that an eight-story single-stair building with 6,000 sq. ft. per floor (building 4) has dramatically lower fire risk than a same-height code-compliant two-stair building with a larger floor plate (building 1) www.dli.mn.gov/sites/defaul...

One big takeaway from Mamdani bringing YIMBYs into his transition is that advocates can often gain a lot of power by 1.) having useful answers to questions and accurate information 2.) being reasonably polite and pleasant to elected officials 3.) understanding the actual mechanics of government

More residents, more workers, more tourists, according to local housing advocate @jongeeting.bsky.social.

YIMBY transit advocate and elected official running against one of southeast PA’s biggest SEPTA traitors from the budget right this year 👌

Pew's main findings: - Newer multifamily is safer than older multifamily - Newer multifamily is safer than newer single-family - Single-stair multifamily buildings are as safe as buildings with two stairwells www.lewis.ucla.edu/2025/12/03/1...

In this episode of UCLA Housing Voice, we talked with Alex Horowitz about Pew's important research — possibly the first of its kind in the U.S.? — evaluating fire safety outcomes for multifamily housing, measured as the risk of dying in a building fire. www.lewis.ucla.edu/2025/12/03/1...

The supply of commercial activity needed to fill Market East far exceeds the demand that currently exists. Local housing advocate @jongeeting.bsky.social argues for more residents, workers, tourists and everyone in between. 

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.