Uber Self-Driving Car Kills Pedestrian

Every day at The Overhead Wire we sort through over 1,500 news items about cities and share the best ones with our email list. At the end of the week, we take some of the most popular stories and share them with Urban Milwaukee readers. They are national (or international) links, sometimes entertaining and sometimes absurd, but hopefully useful.

Suburbs and the rise in poverty: Contrary to popular narratives suburbs have never really been all affluent or white but now poverty has begun to sneak in as more residents of suburbs experience downward mobility. In the past poverty was something that happened to someone else, but now its more likely to hit close to home, in the suburbs. (Slate)

Autonomous vehicle fatality and the future of place: The news of the first death attributed to an automated vehicle has sent shockwaves around the world. Death on our roads is tragic and the discussions about this technology that happen now are important to what the city of the future looks like and how it protects its people. (Brookings)

How will Phoenix survive?: In the desert, Phoenix continues to sprawl outward but without regard to where new water resources will be found. Continued droughts and increased use are drying out the main source of water that culminates in Lake Mead from the Rocky Mountains. And when the water does dry up, scholars worry how resources will be distributed between rich and poor. (Guardian Cities)

Shrinking eastern and midwestern suburbs: Talk of migration has been a major discussion point during many decades of shifting demographics and shrinking cities. But in many suburbs rich and poor the attention is turning towards the rising instances of birthrates dropping below death rates, leading to shrinking populations. (New York Times)

Economic development incentive hidden in tax law: The new tax cut bill passed in December contains a little known incentive to create “opportunity zones” in every state. Governors decide low income tracts for the program (at least 25 in every state) opening them up to investment for ten years while sheltering gains made by investors. (Urban Institute)

Quote of the Week

…his tweet promoting the article engages in a common, but aggravating, rhetorical framing of the issue by construing a move to allow transit-oriented development as being an effort to “force” people out of their cars. Personal liberty and the concept of freedom are, rightly, important to Americans and to American political culture. And in the case of proposals for high-density zoning, nobody is trying to force anyone to do anything.

–Matthew Yglesias in Vox discussing the framing of a recent New York Times article discussing CA SB 827.

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