Taxes & Mortgages

With the “sequestration,” massive cuts to the Federal budget loom. Here's a blow-by-blow account of how it will impact programs landscape architects and other sustainable design professionals care about.[read more]

The Department of Defense released the findings of an independent report on energy efficiency and sustainability standards used by the Pentagon for military construction.[read more]

image via shutterstock

At least part of the reduction in ownership demand (in Toronto) over the second half of 2012 can be linked to weaker migratory flows into the region.[read more]

moving/shutterstock

People move from high-tax states to low-tax states is a popular theory. This hypothesis is rational. Without much rigorous analysis, the theory is an accepted fact of life.[read more]

     On January 1, 2013, the U.S. Congress passed last minute legislation known as the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 to avoid automatic increases in income taxes for millions of Americans, as well as draconian cuts to the budget of the federal government, that many feared would plunge the nation’s economy back...[read more]

One of the fundamental issues in American urbanism is the changing geography of poverty. American cities are famous around the world for having abandoned large portions of the central core, largely unthinkable in Europe and much of the world. Even if suburban historians are doing their best to remind us that poverty has always existed in suburbs, shifts in recent decades are fundamentally changing metropolitan life in many parts of the country.[read more]

Freight Rail via Shutterstock

In 2011 the freight cluster employed over 200,000 people, approximately four percent of the metropolitan Chicago’s workers. Rail and trucking carriers and the industries that support the cluster, like distribution and logistics, wholesale trade, and transportation equipment manufacturers, have long been a cornerstone of the region’s economy.[read more]

(Photo by Tanakawho)I’m sometimes staggered by the sheer breadth of topics that we concern ourselves with in working to make cities Smarter. We encompass technology, social systems, the individual motivation of citizens, financial models, and the really big challenges of demographics and sustainability in our thinking.I’m also struck by...[read more]

Photo by ZacharyTirrell via Flickr

Shrug off the population estimates. Wait for better migration numbers. But pay attention to two things in Southwestern Pennsylvania. The first is the size of the workforce. With each passing month, another record falls. The region is enjoying historical highs. The second data point concerns home sales. The metro market is blistering:Ron...[read more]

Let's examine the production of cars - looking at efforts to reduce the resources and energy it takes to make a car, ship its component parts, and transport that car to the consumer.[read more]

By Theodore BrownSeventy-five years ago, Walker Evans and James Agee published their book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, giving the Depression a composite face: rugged and, while not defeated, profoundly resigned. A portrait of the The Fields, one of the three families that Evans photographed, shows Bud, the father, shirtless and...[read more]

The board of directors of C-Tran, the transit agency that serves Clark County in Vancouver, Wash., voted to add a ballot measure for a 0.1 percent sales tax increase to fund the proposed bus rapid transit (BRT) project, the Oregon Live reports. The ballot measure will be up for voting either in the upcoming August or November 2012...[read more]