Oregon Considers a Universal Basic Income Program

Cash. (CC0)

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. Each 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.

Use the subway for transit: Every few decades there’s a new movement to make something out of Cincinnati’s abandoned subway tunnels that were only partially finished due to the inflationary pressures of WWI and killed entirely by the Great Depression. Joshua Lawrence Junker suggests that as the water main that exists there comes to the end of its useful life, perhaps it’s time to revive the idea of a subway for transit again. (Joshua Lawrence Junker | Cincinnati Enquirer)

Day Zero never came but reforms needed: The headlines had stated Mexico City was perilously close to running out of water but a good fortune of timely rainfall and better water management have relieved the pressure for now. The near miss and attention it garnered also started larger discussions about what the city should be doing better to manage its water systems which were more salient due to a national election for president. (Maya Averbuch | Bloomberg CityLab)

Creating Dreamtroit: Two artists have taken an old car factory in Detroit and transformed it into a haven for artists including studio space and affordable housing. Half the units in the space called Dreamtroit are reserved for artists making less than $40k per year and some of the spaces rent for just $365 a month. And as the area around the factory gets redeveloped by major institutional investors, Dreamtroit stands out as “a point of resistance.” (Patricia Leigh Brown | New York Times)

Oregon voters to consider a state basic income rebate: In Oregon, voters will be asked whether the state’s minimum tax on large companies should be increased to give every resident of the state a $750 tax rebate and for some residents with low incomes it could be a direct cash payment. But not everyone is a fan of the idea of universal basic income programs. A lot of elected officials including the governor have come out against it and other states have even written laws banning the practice. (Erika Bolstad | Pew Stateline)

Traffic models and highway spending: Ben Ross and Joe Cortright argue that billions of dollars have been wasted on highway expansions sold to the public through black box traffic models trained to get results that point towards expansion. They use two examples of projects they have been following closely, the I-5 Columbia River Crossing plan in Portland and Maryland’s toll lane expansion to show how the process has been perverted, and pushed actual solutions to congestion to the side. (Ben Ross and Joe Cortright in Dissent Magazine)

Quote of the Week

Those who don’t see themselves in those images or who live in built-up areas may feel as if cycling is not for them because they are not also white, slim, or able-bodied and do not have widespread access to green spaces and calmer roads on which to cycle.

-A report by the UK charity Possible shared in Forbes on how there’s a lack of diversity in cycling imagery.

This week on the Talking Headways podcast we’re joined by Cassidy Boulan and Thom Stead of the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC).

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