The kids are all right
One of my key takeaways from the Progress Conference echoed Jason Crawford’s closing remarks, and it was pretty simple: the kids are all right. This was reinforced through a number of chance meetings I had. In one sessio…
Nisha Austin
15 blurbs
The cascade of rigidity
I was excited to see America.gov launch yesterday, and happened to be reading How to peel a banana by Marina Nitze this week. There’s a nice parallel between being able to access the right information and the information…
The state of think tanks
On Think Tanks published its State of the Sector report last week, surveying 299 think tanks across 94 countries. Two thirds of the respondents named funding as a challenge this year, and almost half expect the environme…
Taste vs. cost
Is it classical or modern? An image of Casa Botines in Leon, Spain, designed by Gaudi. Image Source: Wikipedia My career began in architecture, so reading Robert Kwolek on whether people prefer traditional buildings and …
Five numbers that show a policy field is growing
Nisha Austin: This week I wish I were reading something about which ~five numbers tell you a policy field is growing rather than just getting louder. I'd like to see some metrics around things like how many paid jobs the…
Observations from Europe
My family vacationed (or as they might say, “vacationed”) in Spain over the last couple of weeks, and we walked a portion of the Camino de Santiago from Sahagún to León. We had our three and six year olds in tow, so ther…
Can you pay off the NIMBYs?
A forthcoming paper by Michael Hankinson, Edward Glaeser, Joseph Gyourko, and Morris Davis surveyed roughly 1,700 residents of expensive areas and found that most people do have a price. Over 80 percent accepted at least…
10,000 pieces of type
One of my favorite 4th of July traditions is to go to the historic fort in town for a reading of the Declaration and firing of the cannons by a historical reenactment group. This year, with the sweltering temperatures, w…
Updates from Congress
The first major federal housing bill in roughly 30 years just took a big step forward. After months of ping-ponging between the House and Senate, all four corners (the chairs and ranking members of the Senate Banking and…
Data center power lines in Loudoun County
Potential routes for transmission lines in Loudon. Source: Dominion Energy, via Bay Journal Last month, Dylan wrote about Loudoun County, Virginia , home of the largest concentration of data centers in the world, and whe…
State abundance agendas
One thing we’ve been tracking is the proliferation of state and local abundance agendas. In the last year, we’ve seen Abundance New York publish a detailed policy roadmap across housing, transit, energy, and governance; …
Dispatches from Marblehead
By now you’ve probably seen the viral clip of Marblehead resident David Modica asking his fellow townspeople the question heard ‘round the internet. Jerusalem Demsas wrote about it in The Argument , making the case that …
Are we kind of being pricks?
“ Are we kind of being pricks? ,” asked a resident at Marblehead’s annual Town Meeting this week in a video that went viral (full disclosure: I live here and serve on the Housing Committee). After four votes over three y…
Serviceberries, Lincoln, and shared abundance
Nisha Austin: Around the time when I started getting into ‘Abundance’ (in the way we all think about it here), my mother-in-law gave me Robin Wall Kimmerer’s The Serviceberry . I think she was trying to piece together ex…
What Alex is reading while Jordan's away
The main thing Alex has been reading this week is the text of the Senate Banking Committee housing reform bill , for which he is deep in the details. It’s encouraging to see bipartisan movement on federal housing policy,…