Urbanism Speakeasy #22

Here's your reading list from?Urbanism Speakeasy

1. Legal: housing personal cars in public space.
2. Illegal: housing variety in the neighborhood.
3. Vital: a new nonprofit building better cities in the South.

I'm hosing a live conversation for Southern Urbanism on Tue, April 4, noon EST. Tony Jordan , president of Parking Reform Network will be joining me. Bring your opinions & questions about land use policy that cripples good urbanism. Click here to set a reminder .

The amount of space devoted to parking in US cities is staggering.

The City of Los Angeles is 469 square miles. Planners estimate that surface parking gobbles up 200 square miles of land. In a time when affordable housing is routinely making headlines, LA is home to 4 million people and at least 19 million parking spaces.?

Minimum parking requirements have had a profound impact on the way our cities are designed and developed. Read the full story .

Arlington, VA's big news matters to you, wherever you live.

YIMBY/NIMBY labels can play a helpful role in urbanism storytelling, both as a rallying cry to draw like-minded supporters and as a slight on the ideological opponents.?

Put the advocacy labels aside for a moment and consider housing as a property rights issue.?Land use regulations exist to restrict your property rights . In my experience, planners and urbanists dismiss the property rights phrase with an eye roll. Let's talk about it!

“Southern urbanism” is no longer an oxymoron.

I joined up with a new nonprofit called Southern Urbanism whose mission is to build better cities in the South. Everything they do is geared towards the application of human-scale design ideas that you read about here in Urbanism Speakeasy.

Watch the video in the article . This is really important work, and I hope you can help.

Twitter is real life.

"Daylighting" an intersection is often overlooked as a traffic calming tool, but it's so easy to implement.