According to the Department of Energy, even though medium- and heavy-duty trucks account for only 4% of the vehicles in the United States, they consume 25% of total highway fuel and create nearly 30% of highway carbon emissions. Stricter standards on smog-forming emissions on trucks will take effect in 2027, which could force companies to turn to electric versions such as this Tesla fleet.
Since trucking is essential, even small improvements to gas mileage and emissions could go a long ways. I am not sure that having full fleets of electric trucks or even autonomous electric trucks in a few decades time would look that futuristic but it sounds like they could help.
1. Allow Area N to remain a wetland and preserve the open space in line with the South Barrington park district’s overall mission.
2. If Area N will be sold for a development, access should not be granted through Acadia Drive. Acadia Drive is within a residential community that has no sidewalks and permitting access to the development through the residential community, without sidewalks (the Woods of South Barrington), presents a nuisance and would be grossly negligent on behalf of the Village and the South Barrington park district. There is a walking trail (that is accessed from Acadia Drive or feeds residents onto Acadia Drive) where the access would be granted and children and residents are outside after school, on weekend and holidays. These are all peak worship times. The school also presents this same safety issues at the end of the school day where children who live in the residential community are walking home from being dropped off by the school bus. The residential community should remain residential and not be subject to increased development traffic. As repeatedly noted, this is a significant safety concern. The safety of our children and residents should be top priority for the Village and the South Barrington park district.
3. Further we request access not be granted on Bartlett road at all to preserve the surrounding residential communities from the same safety concerns.
Additionally, some of those signing the petition offered reasons they do not want this particular church in their community.
While this is about a particular piece of land and a particular religious group working within a particular suburban community, these reasons are fairly standard from what I have seen in my research. They have concerns about losing open space/natural space and park land. They are worried about traffic in residential neighborhoods. They do not want a group that multiple commenters call a cult in their community.
This will work its way through the legal system and local government bodies. Suburbanites who do not want certain land uses nearby can be quite persistent in their efforts to make sure proposals they do not like reach a certain outcome. Whether they can guarantee the outcome they want is another matter.
Constructed in 2000 at the northwest corner of Naperville and Warrenville roads, the five-story glass and steel complex at one time was touted as a technological hub with the potential to sustain thousands of jobs.
But with the recent arrival of cranes, excavators and other heavy equipment, a new era is beginning for the 41-acre site that’s part of the city’s Interstate 88 corridor.
Oak Brook-based Franklin Partners — which in April finalized the purchase of 1960 Lucent Lane for $4.75 million — in June received a demolition permit from the city to raze the 500,000-square-foot building and the three-story parking garages on either side…
Discouraged by city officials to develop warehouses on the property, Franklin Partners replied by saying it would seek a technology-based alternative.
The arrival of a high-status tech company on this suburban plot helped give rise to more white-collar employers in Naperville plus numerous subdivisions.
It is too simple to say that the fate of this land could do much to affect Naperville’s future trajectory. At the same time, it is a large parcel of land that once helped affect Naperville’s future. It sounds like the city clearly does not want the property to become warehouses, but what could arise here that contributes to a vibrant future?
The worst-case scenario would go like this: With more people working from home, companies from Milwaukee to Memphis are rethinking their leases or pulling out of them altogether. That drives vacancy rates up and makes it harder for landlords to attract new tenants or sell buildings for a healthy price.
Then property owners might struggle to pay off their mortgages or clear other debt. Business districts would dry up, stifling tax revenue from commercial properties or employee wages. Shoppers and tourists would have fewer reasons to venture downtown to eat or shop, choking off spending and forcing layoffs at restaurants and retail stores.
“Once those offices are empty, there are few alternatives and not a lot of life after hours,” said Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, a professor of real estate and finance at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business who is one of the authors of a paper that coined the “urban doom loop” phrase. Midsize cities “have a much bigger chasm to cross than what New York City has to go through. The situation is worse in those places with so little else in place.” He added, “It is a train wreck in slow motion.”
Once the primary use of a district starts disappearing, it can be hard to reverse the pattern. This is true in downtowns where much of the space is used for offices. It can be true for other uses as well, such as when retail dries up at shopping malls or a particular industrial activity slows down in a one industry place.
Is the primary way of addressing this right now simply to hope it the doom loop does not get too far? Are there any interventions that could help protect against worsening conditions? This could be an interesting time for experimentation across American cities as places and firms adjust to less need for permanent office space.
The 9 a.m.-5 p.m., five-days-a-week-in-an-office commuter is an endangered species on the brink of extinction. And that reality poses an existential crisis for transit agencies, especially commuter rails like Metra.
Now the agency’s post-pandemic recovery plans are coming into focus, and commuters could soon feel changes, from some increased fares to new ridership packages that will make a popular 10-ride card obsolete.
But perhaps the most interesting shift is Metra’s attempt to market itself as more than a vehicle to get white-collar workers downtown…
The plan is also focused on promoting non-downtown trips, which Metra sees as a growth opportunity. To encourage a trip to the zoo, for example, one-way tickets that don’t include a downtown starting point or destination would cost $3.75 regardless of distance…
Even if Metra wanted to add more frequent trains — which Gillis said it does — that change can’t happen overnight. Mixing up schedules would likely require infrastructure updates and new agreements with the freight railroads that share the tracks Metra trains travel on. All that would come at a cost, which may be out of reach for an agency barrelling toward a budgetary crisis.
One issue that is very difficult to address: is the railroad infrastructure in the Chicago region just not in the right places? The hub-and-spoke model worked for decades but more commuting is suburb to suburb. The region needs rail lines and other mass transit options that link suburbs and suburban job centers. Even just adding one or two dependable connector options between the Metra lines could be a big help. (See the proposed STAR Line.)
Another route to pursue: continue to encourage communities to build more transit-oriented development that can help create a larger residential base who can easily hop on and off railroad lines. I was recently on a suburban railroad line and saw a family with small kids hop on for three stops and get off. If more people can easily walk to a station, travel quickly and reliability, and find something interesting within a short walk a few stops away, they will do so. What might be good for local development can also be good for Metra.
You can see it by looking at residential-vacancy rates, which have been as low as 2 percent in recent years. You can tell by looking at the size and price of rentals and homes for purchase: The average rent in Manhattan is more than $4,000, and the average home in Brooklyn costs roughly $1 million. You can see it in the shrinking of New York’s middle class and the stagnation of its population and the widening of its income and wealth inequality. Housing supply has simply not kept pace with housing demand, squeezing everyone except for the very rich.
The same forces shunting families to the suburbs are weighing on the migrants. The same forces driving New Yorkers out of unaffordable apartments and into homeless shelters are weighing on the migrants. Migrants cannot afford housing for the same reason that the city itself struggles to raise money for new facilities. New York really is full…
High housing costs have a way of making every problem a housing problem. A homeless person needing help with a substance-abuse disorder needs housing first. A migrant requiring legal aid more pressingly needs a roof over their head. And high housing costs, of course, force millions of vulnerable people into homelessness. “Our homeless-response system has turned into a crisis-response system,” Gregg Colburn, an associate real-estate professor at the University of Washington’s College of Built Environments, told me. “So many other systems have failed or delegated responsibility to it.”
The opposite is also true: Low housing costs make other problems simpler to solve. Cheap housing reduces the number of people who become homeless. It also allows the entities providing assistance to do more for less, because their overhead costs are lower. And it frees up lawyers to work on immigration cases, substance-use experts to work on substance-use issues, and mental-health counselors to work on mental-health issues.
It is enough to make one think that seriously and sufficiently addressing housing should be a major priority!
The problem is not just limited to New York City. Multiple big cities in the United States need more housing units and lower-priced yet good quality housing. Having a stable place to live at a reasonable price goes a long way to better life outcomes and opportunities.
But, adding a lot of good housing takes a lot of work and there does not seem to be political will to address it. Additionally, it can be easy to look for other solutions to some of the different problems listed above. Would building more good housing automatically solve these issues? No, but it could help a lot and make it more possible for people to live and enjoy major cities.
In 1871, the city’s one-of-a-kind water link between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River helped make it the country’s busiest port, one that lured more ships than New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston and Mobile combined, according to the Encyclopedia of Chicago…
Intriguingly, Chicago still has access to major bodies of water. Whether they are in as much demand as the past and whether they are in good enough shape to handle more traffic (the subject of the article cited above) are other matters. Could there be a future world where more goods and materials go by ship and Chicago benefits from its location that can link the Atlantic, the Great Lakes, and the Mississippi?
Amid a flurry of rumors about a mysterious buyer who has purchased 52,000 acres in Solano County, local residents have received a survey gauging support for a “new city with tens of thousands of new homes.”…
Screenshots of the survey reviewed by SFGATE show an extensive market research campaign. It starts by informing recipients that they will be weighing in on “a description of an initiative that might be on the ballot in Solano County next year” regarding a new development in eastern Solano County.
“This project would include a new city with tens of thousands of new homes, a large solar energy farm, orchards with over a million new trees, and over ten thousand acres of new parks and open space,” the survey continues…
Since news of Flannery’s acquisitions broke, locals have speculated the buyer could be planning anything from a deep water port to a regional airport to even a nuclear power plant. But building a new city from scratch would present its own set of challenges. For one, the developer would need to acquire water rights to support large suburban housing tracts. And, according to Farley, it would need to change Solano County’s “orderly growth” policy, which restricts urban development in many parts of the county.
Buying up land quietly has a long history. If plans are made public, land prices can go up. People start raising objections. Thus, developers try to acquire land behind the scenes and then make a proposal.
The text polls are interesting. Presumably, they can help the buyers/developers tweak their plan and/or public pitch for development. The data might not be great – how many local residents will respond to an anonymous poll? – but it could provides hint of what locals see as doable or what they do not like.
Almost regardless of what is proposed for this land, expect a lot of response. Housing is needed in the Bay Area but neighbors and leaders will certainly have concerns. Additionally, I would expect commentary on how the process has progressed to that point.
On Monday, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate reached 7.48%, marking the highest level since the year 2000. Even prior to this recent surge in mortgage rates, housing affordability, as monitored by the Atlanta Fed, had already deteriorated beyond the levels seen at the housing bubble’s peak in 2006. Once this latest mortgage rate surge is factored in, August 2023 will become the worst month for housing affordability this century.
The journey to this predicament can be traced back to last year’s sharp rise in mortgage rates, which escalated from 3% to over 7%. That rate surge, coupled with the Pandemic Housing Boom pushing U.S. home prices up over 40% in just over two years, deteriorated housing affordability across the nation…
While the current lack of housing affordability echoes the affordability conditions leading up to the 2008 housing crash, there are distinct differences that set the two periods apart. Unlike the years preceding the 2008 crash, the nation is not grappling with an excessive surplus of existing homes for sale. In fact, housing inventory levels are hovering at historic lows, with July 2023 witnessing a staggering 47% decline in homes available for sale compared to July 2019.
Furthermore, the U.S. housing market in 2023 is not plagued by the risky mortgage products that contributed to the 2008 bust. In fact, the Pandemic Housing Boom was the opposite of the boom in the aughts: This boom was primarily led by households with high incomes, who because of low mortgage rates and remote-work policies were seeking out a new home.
I am a little surprised there are not more leaders proposing solutions or calling for addressing this issue. Housing is often the biggest expense in a household budget. People may not be able to find stable, quality housing. They will not be able to develop wealth. It is difficult to move. People will pay more in interest. People can experience anxiety about housing. And so on.
There might be a temptation to sit back and say people should wait for interest rates to stabilize and/or decline. Or, the housing market will have more inventory at some point.
Yet, housing is a complicated issue and there are multiple ways to address it. How can more housing at lower price points be built? How can existing homeowners rally for the need for cheaper housing costs (even as they might benefit from rising home values)? What incentives or sticks are needed to get various actors in the housing industry moving on providing more options?
Chicago is seeing more rental housing developments geared toward families like the Matariyehs, as buildings with higher concentrations of two-bedroom or larger apartments are coming on the market or under construction. On top of the shortage of housing broadly, there is also a shortage of family-sized rental housing — typically defined as units with two or more bedrooms — in Chicago and nationally. Rental housing for families that is affordable is in especially limited supply, as two- to four-flats have continued to be gobbled up or priced up by gentrification in Chicago.
A 2020 report from the Chicago Department of Housing finds that for the past decade, market-rate construction has leaned heavily toward studio and one-bedroom units, which, in turn, has shaped affordable housing production. For affordable housing developed through the city’s Affordable Requirements Ordinance — the policy which requires many developers to make a chunk of their units affordable housing — more than 75% of units under construction or completed as of 2020 were studios and one-bedrooms, with less than 5% being three-bedroom units or larger, according to the city report.
Whether in city neighborhoods or suburban communities, larger units mean more children might be present. Children need to go to school. Children can create noise. Children might be drawn to different local amenities than others.
Some of this is a cost question. Housing proposals in suburbs can often into details about how many children might be attending local schools. How will these costs be covered?
When thinking about more expensive developments in cities and suburbs, many places look at two groups of residents they want to target: young professionals and downsizing seniors. The first group is college-educated and is looking for a package of culture and entertainment. The second group is looking to move to a smaller space and enjoy life in ways they might not have been able to with work and/or family obligations.
There will always be at least a few places and developments that appeal to families. Suburbs, for example, can be known for being family-friendly. There is money to be made here.
But, shifts in households and lifestyles may mean an increasing number of places with relatively few or no children – and this is reinforced by the built environment.
Legally Sociable 