Does anyone have recommendations for things to see/do in Montreal or Quebec City?

We don't have the full 2025 stats yet because of the government shutdown, but as of August 2025 Detroit was on track for another banger year of housing permitting housingdata.app/places/MI/De...

Trying to understand how expensive providing low-income IZ units is in California under SDBL/SB79. If I did the math right (HUD low-income limit * 0.6/0.8*0.3/12, since HUD low-income limit is 80% of AMI but California low-income per HSC 50053 is 60% of AMI), this doesn't seem very onerous?

I imagine there will be a divide at YIMBYtown this year where people from most states want to learn things while the Californians, Oregonians, Washingtonians, and Texans just want to party

The new CA State Assembly website (www.assembly.ca.gov) is so much worse than the old one (web.archive.org/web/20250825...). Bring back 2000s high density web design!

SB840 bans FAR limits in all multifamily zones and requires all multifamily zones in a city have the same height and density limit. Since all of Austin now has missing middle zoning, does that mean all residential lots in Austin now have basically no density, FAR, or height limits?? Just setbacks?

Dan Keshet@dankeshet.bsky.social · 12mo ago

SB840 day is coming up next Monday: soon it will be legal to build apartments wherever you can build shops in medium-to-large cities throughout Texas! Characteristically, Austin's bureaucracy can't respond with speed and instead plans to update its code sometime in Spring.

In response to SB840, Plano added multifamily residential as an allowed use in all commercial zones, and also updated all multifamily zones to: - Remove density, FAR, lot coverage limits - Increase height limit to 45 ft - Reduce front yard requirement to 25 ft - Reduce parking requirement to 1/unit

wtf, Dumbo Market is owned by Key Foods?? 🤯

I was today years old when I realized this album cover is a reference to suicide

Housing crisis in Unincorporated LA County (and other cities with similarly lax SFH development standards) will be solved in 24 days

Sid Kapur@sid-kap.bsky.social · last yr.

Unincorporated LA County R-1 imposes 35 ft height, front setback 20 ft. SB 1123 allows side/rear setbacks 4 ft. No FAR limits because the underlying zone doesn't have them. Besides the front setback, this seems really flexible!! Should actually be able to fit 4-7 big townhouses or condos

Chat what do we think about caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2022/10/11/w...

Why high speed rail hasn’t caught on

High Speed Rail (HSR) has been in the news, with a recent New York Times article listing some of the reasons that the California HSR project seems unlikely to ever be completed. Quite aside from Ca…

caseyhandmer.wordpress.com

Republicans killed Plano Tomorrow and then 4 years later applied Plano Tomorrow to the whole state

Parker Welch@parkerwelch.bsky.social · last yr.

Quite possibly the biggest upzoning in American history

This article is actually pretty great? It's way more detailed and precise than a typical article about a bill in Congress There should be more articles with Wikipedia-style lists of facts presented neutrally

ren they/them 🏳️‍⚧️@renzaro.com · last yr.

CHATGPT IS NOT A JOURNALIST CHATGPT RESPONSES ARENT JOURNALISM HIRE JOURNALISTS

In 2024, Detroit permitted more housing per capita than San Francisco, Los Angeles, Manhattan, Boston, Washington DC, and Philadelphia

Would be cool if Google uses this as an opportunity to update Street View pictures of Market St that haven't been updated in years (some parts in 2019, some in 2022). Might be hard to fit Street View cameras on top of a Waymo without interfering with the LIDAR though www.sf.gov/news-mayor-l...

Supposedly Newsom told both the CA Senate and Assembly leaders to read Abundance... youtu.be/Bt_LQNS7hmU?... (at 33:55)

And, This is Ezra Klein | This is Gavin Newsom

YouTube video by This is Gavin Newsom

youtu.be

California spent years debating social housing, while Oregon just... did it?

Michael Andersen@andersem.bsky.social · last yr.

5. SB 684, from @senkhanhpham.bsky.social, lets Oregon explore a new (but globally popular) way to finance below-market housing: put it in the same building as market rate homes, then use the revenue to build more homes. olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2025R1/M...

It's giving BART

What's the latest on Berkeley's missing middle ordinance?

Does anyone know what Urban Kchoze is up to/their reaction to the single stair movement? Wild that an anon blogger wrote these posts that have in the 5-10 years since inspired numerous white papers, state bills, etc. and we haven't heard anything from them since

NYC single stair twitter/Adam Neely fan crosspost

apoorva lal@apoorvalal.com · 2y ago

behold, the video they show at fire-marshal school to strike fear into the hearts of novices youtu.be/5B8i1Fpa0yQ

Did not realize Seattle rents increased that much from 1997 to 2007, I understand why Ben Gibbard is a NIMBY now (Apologies for my 2010s-era tweeting, I am old)

Mike Eliason@holz-bau.bsky.social · 2y ago

seattle as a whole almost did between 1997-2007, there are definitely neighborhoods where rent more than doubled in that timeframe and that was with a 16% increase in housing stock

Is Polis the first governor to use the words "stair reform" in a speech??

Nathaniel Minor@nbminor.bsky.social · 2y ago

Also, big news for the single-stair case housing nerds. Looks like the Colorado legislature is gonna take that on this session:

When we end up upzoning Southern Brooklyn and Eastern Queens for midrise, we really need to (1) expand single-stair to larger floor plates and multiple PABs per building, and (2) make some new zoning categories with higher height/lower FAR I want setbacks and green space, not Park Slope 2.0

Mike Eliason@holz-bau.bsky.social · 2y ago

it varies - even on that street it's a combo of zero lot lines and just front setbacks, and front and side yard setbacks... but guessing it's a combo of changing building regs and more flexibility due to lower FAR

Yes.

Don't want to discourage anyone from subscribing, but I think you can get the density allowed by AB 1893 by multiplying "Parcel Size" and "Maximum Density Allowed" from Appendix 4.7 from planning.lacity.gov/plans-polici...

Joe Cohen@cohenhouse.bsky.social · 2y ago

As of yesterday, ~25,000 parcels in Los Angeles have now been upzoned, thanks to a state law nobody was paying attention to Should I compile a spreadsheet of them and make it available to future Patreon subscribers?

NYC subway map where the euclidean distance between two points tries to be proportional to the shortest-path travel time between the two stations (in minutes) (with actual map for comparison) You can kind of make out where each borough is?

This is better than NYC's A frequency on weekends

YIMBYonese Liberation Army@dingbattitude.bsky.social · 2y ago

That’s more like it

What's the YIMBY-NIMBY count on Berkeley City Council after the election? Are they considering delaying the missing middle ordinance so they can pass a bolder one in January?

Great example of why I hate usage of the word "experts" in newspapers. The Great Barrington Declaration was rebuked by *some* public health experts, not all public health experts. All 3 authors of the declaration are themselves public health experts! www.washingtonpost.com/health/2024/...