Otis WhiteBook of the Week: “Fragile Neighborhoods: Repairing American Society, One Zip Code at a Time” by Seth D. Kaplan starts with a warning: American society is unraveling. But it then offers a remedy: #neighborhoods that bring people together and encourage cooperation. And it offers examples of such places around the country, including one highly successful mixed-income neighborhood in Atlanta. https://www.atlantaurbanist.com/book/fragile-neighborhoods/
People who care about cities have a villain: work from home, which has reduced transit use and emptied #downtowns. But what if #WFH were seen as a gift, a way of turning residential-only #neighborhoods into mixed-use places? It might cause us to be especially enthusiastic about home-based businesses and ask … what can we do to encourage them? https://www.governing.com/policy/why-do-we-make-it-so-hard-for-home-based-businesses
If you could describe a great civic environment, it might be a place so collaborative that tiny #parks are “planned, planted, named and maintained” by neighbors, working with the city’s parks dept. Believe it or not, there are 137 of such “street parks” in S.F. They are delights for the eye and the pride of #neighborhoods, and parks officials want more of them. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/street-park-san-francisco-22204547.php #volunteers
Birds Books and BullshitThe suburban experiment was designed to skip over the messy process of incrementally assembling a neighborhood. But those steps are necessary, if the neighborhood is to grow strong and endure. Neighborhoods built all at once go bad all at once.
–Escaping the Housing Trap
CBC SaskatchewanTwo vehicle arsons in different neighborhoods unsettle Regina residents
Two neighborhoods in Regina are shaken after vehicles were set on fire on different days this week.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/two-regina-vehicle-arsons-different-neighbourhoods-9.7167415?cmp=rss
Two neighborhoods in Regina are shaken after vehicles were set on fire on different days this week.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/two-regina-vehicle-arsons-different-neighbourhoods-9.7167415?cmp=rss
“A self-reinforcing mechanism”: Cities want to create mixed-income #neighborhoods that remain mixed. That is, that don’t end up displacing lower-income families. How can they do this? Atlanta Mayor Dickens has a theory: use tax-increment financing. An advisor to the mayor explains how it would work. https://www.ajc.com/opinion/2026/04/atlanta-is-two-cities-at-a-crossroads-we-cant-blow-it-we-must-succeed/
We fight over terms like “density” and “single-family housing” and sometimes overlook the things right in front of us that are working reasonably well and without controversy. What would that be in #affordablehousing? Garden apartments, which are low-rise, affordable apartments that most people find acceptable in their #neighborhoods. https://www.governing.com/urban/the-everyday-housing-we-manage-to-ignore
Every city has #neighborhoods where undesirable land uses locate, from homeless centers to drug treatment agencies. In S.F., South of Market or SoMa is one of these places The usual demand is for the city to spread out the undesirable land uses. But SoMa’s leaders have another idea: bring us market-rate #housing. And lots of it. https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/tenderloin-soma-san-francisco-homeless-22160262.php
ResearchBuzz: FirehoseTomorrow City: Heatwave risk, down to your block: the new tool making it visible. “The WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities has just launched Cool Cities Lab, a mapping tool focused on understanding the extent of heatwaves and, above all, identifying vulnerabilities in urban areas…. It can assess how heat impacts areas at street level and even street by street, helping to visualize where […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/04/02/heatwave-risk-down-to-your-block-the-new-tool-making-it-visible-tomorrow-city/A public research organization finds that only 44% of Americans would want to live in #walkable #neighborhoods rather than sprawling suburbs, if those were the only choices. So, that’s bad, right? Actually, it’s great. If we created enough walkable neighborhoods for the 44% who want them … our cities would thrive. And others might be persuaded. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/03/19/majority-of-americans-prefer-spread-out-communities-with-big-houses/
