Follow Tokyo’s Lead on Housing?

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.

Caltrans highway building exposed: Jeanie Ward-Waller was removed from her post at Caltrans last month for speaking up about how the agency was allegedly using state money earmarked for paving projects for highway expansion and splitting highway projects up into sections to avoid environmental reviews. She was initially brought on to head new sustainability programs but now she is considering how to move forward with a whistleblower complaint. (Debra Khan | Politico)

Traffic speeds around the world: According to a new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research looking at 1,200 large cities in 152 countries, travel time in cities around the world isn’t just about traffic or congestion. Factors such as layout and geographic features as well as the quality of roads can be taken into account. In the end, the biggest predictor of travel time was the wealth of the country in which the city was located. (Oliver Staley | Time Magazine)

Houston amends residential development requirements: New building code regulations in Houston will prohibit front loaded “snout house” garages in some neighborhoods to increase pedestrian safety and allow more missing middle building types to be built by increasing allowable ADU sizes to 1,500 sf and more 3-8 unit buildings. Parking requirements will be reduced or disappear as they make it easier to build some of the units as well. (Adam Zuvanich | Houston Public Media)

Follow Tokyo’s lead: After World War II Tokyo faced a growing population and huge housing shortage. So the national government stepped in and created a simple zoning regime and permitting system that allowed developers to build a lot more housing. From the 1960s, Tokyo has tripled its housing supply while New York has only increased by 1/3rd. That has led to lower rental prices where the median rent is just 20% of disposable income. (Eliza Relman | Business Insider)

Abandoned lands a hidden resource: Abandoned farmland has been increasing all over the world. In a country like Bulgaria which has lost 28% of its population, rewilded land gives researchers an opportunity to study the biodiversity benefits of leaving former farmland to nature. Scientists say that this rewilding has benefits currently measured at 40 million tons of carbon annually but there might also be dangers in increased wildfires and invasive species movement. (Fred Pearce  | Yale e360)

Quote of the Week

It’s the same feeling as the one I had when I was younger, with my parents driving their car, and it was like traffic jams all over the place. So now it’s really a bike traffic jam. But it’s kind of a good difficulty to have. Especially when we think about what Paris used to be.

–Thibault Quéré, a spokesperson for the Federation of Bicycle Users in the Associated Press discussing Paris’ bike traffic jams.

This week on the podcast, we’re joined by Bob Searns to talk about his book Beyond Greenways: The Next Step for City Trails and Walking Routes.

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