The Good Car Tax Guide

Electric car charging station. (CC0 Public Domain)

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.

Texas legislators against road diets: Republican lawmakers in Texas are targeting street design that focuses on traffic safety by filing a bill to limit cities from reducing car lanes for bikes and buses. Some legislators are worried that the vague language may do more to restrict local decision making on sustainable transportation and curtail safety efforts. The bill would also outlaw (de)congestion pricing as well. (Megan Kimble | Houston Chronicle)

Vehicular homelessness in different forms: In California more laws are targeting the housing shortage and building supply, but one lawmaker wants help for students that will be graduated by the time the benefits of those laws accrue. This includes ensuring California state colleges and community colleges create a parking program that allows students to have a safe space to live in their vehicles while they attend school. A second similar article discusses the parking lots around Colorado ski towns that only allow overnight parking if people are employed locally. (Eric He | Politico and Rukmini Callimachi and Erin Schaff | New York Times)

Art as urbanism critique: A new art project by John Pobojewski entitled “Pillage Purge Plunder” critiques megacity projects such as NEOM in Saudi Arabia that he feels are irresponsible from an environmental and social perspective. The challenge to visitors of this project is how to rethink designing livable cities and harness new technologies to get more positive change. (Kim Tidwell | Print Magazine)

Takings in Rhode Island: The Rhode Island suburban city of Johnston with a population of just 30,000 people is taking a piece of property from affordable housing developers allegedly to stop a new 252 unit development. Eminent domain has been getting more attention after the Kelo vs New London Supreme Court case which allowed a municipal entity to take private property but also limits seizures under false motives. More proof is emerging that the mayor just doesn’t want affordable housing in the community and this case could set a national precedent in this regard. (Jingnan Peng and Mackenzie Farkus | Christian Science Monitor)

The good car tax guide: Transport and Environment has published its 3rd “Good Tax Guide” which compares car taxation schemes for new passenger vehicles in 31 countries in order to find the greenest. The results show that most of the European Union’s largest car markets have little incentive for people to purchase electric vehicles over existing gasoline offerings. (Transport and Environment)

Quote of the Week

I’d like to see alternative housing and the repurposing of structures not only be more accepted, but easier for people to do. We hear a lot about the “housing crisis,” but I believe we’re dealing more with a greed crisis and also a paucity of creativity. There are unfortunately a lot of towns and municipalities that are not accepting of tiny living or converted vehicles. In many cases, it’s because people are afraid their traditional houses will be devalued because of these approaches. But imagine what we could do with all of the decommissioned schools buses, box trucks, airplanes, etc. We might not have an unhoused population.

–Alex Eaves shares his thoughts about materials reuse in Urban futures | Frugal growth | Experiential learning.

This week on the Talking Headways podcast, we’re joined by Kyle Paoletta to talk about his book American Oasis: Finding the Future in the Cities of the Southwest.

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