Newark Launches Land Bank to Revive Long-Vacant Properties
The land bank will assess proposals for the sale and redevelopment of 100 city-owned properties in neglected neighborhoods. March 7, 2021, 7am PST | Diana Ionescu |
Following in the steps of other cities in the eastern United States, Newark has launched a land bank aimed at reducing blight and activating vacant and abandoned properties, writes Jared Brey in Next City. Managed by Invest Newark, the land bank is now accepting bids and proposals for around 100 vacant lots and buildings formerly under city ownership.
Generally managed by a non-profit or government agency, a land bank is designed to expedite the sale and redevelopment of vacant and blighted properties. Invest Newark hopes the land bank will extend the revitalization of Newark’s downtown out into its neighborhoods, promote business ownership, create opportunities for minority and women-owned businesses and contractors, establish new parks and green sp
Bozeman s Only Racially Diverse Neighborhood at Risk
Thanks in part to an influx of remote workers, the Montana town faces soaring housing costs and practically non-existent vacancy rates. March 4, 2021, 9am PST | Diana Ionescu |
When Montana State University decided to reallocate its family and graduate student housing to undergraduates, they may have dealt a fatal blow to what one professor calls Bozeman s only racially diverse neighborhood. The university-owned housing, writes Surya Milner in High Country News, was home to custodians, researchers and tenure-track professors at the university, many of whom are now forced to relocate to more expensive housing in other parts of the city or leave the city altogether.
Lone Star Grid
The Arctic blast that shut down power to millions of Texas households last week has brought renewed attention to the isolated Texas power grid that prevented the operator from importing out-of-state electricity. February 24, 2021, 10am PST | Irvin Dawid Share
There are three power grids in the lower 48 states: the Eastern Interconnection, the Western Interconnection, and the Texas Interconnection.
Kate Galbraith, the former energy and environment reporter for The Texas Tribune, penned a go-to piece about the uniqueness of Texas having its own power grid that s as relevant today as it was when she wrote it ten years ago after an Arctic blast shut down 152 generating units, 28% of the generators that supplied electricity to the power grid operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT).
The World s Most Beautiful Avenue Getting A Green Makeover
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo approved a new plan to revitalize the Champs Élysées ahead of the 2024 Summer Olympics. January 21, 2021, 6am PST | Diana Ionescu |
A century and a half after Baron Haussmann, at the behest of Napoleon III, overhauled the city of Paris with wide boulevards and expansive gardens in a vast reorganization that aimed to modernize the city and prevent civil unrest, city leaders are once again transforming its most famous avenue, the Champs-Élysées, hoping to revitalize what has become, for many Parisians, a lackluster corridor of luxury shops and car dealerships.
Health Care Institutions Must Acknowledge Their Role in Neighborhood Change
If those in health care seek to develop new ways to help patients stay in their homes, they must also find ways to temper how they affect communities in which they reside. January 15, 2021, 7am PST | LM Ortiz Share
Jon Bilous
Over the course of my medical training I have worked in cities that hold the dual distinctions of being both home to some of the largest medical institutions in the country as well as the sites of increasingly untenable affordable housing crises. I have seen countless patients bear the consequences of unsafe or unstable housing on their bodies and minds: the mold exacerbating their asthma, the medication missed because of stays in shelter leading to uncontrolled diabetes, the missed rent payments and threatening landlords leading to gnawing anxiety. These realities make clear that safe, affordable housing is a necessary foundation for good health, a fact that is now only furth