2025
"What I Like About Mews Style Townhomes"
The American South has spent the past decade undergoing a quiet but remarkable cultural shift: a home attached to your neighbour is no longer a sign of low income. Until recently, townhomes and multifamily were the exclusive domain of less affluent residents, but they have rapidly become desirable to mid-market (and increasingly high-end) buyers. That’s what is happening with urban townhomes in Durham.
...More"Luxury Apartments Are Bringing Rent Down in Some Big Cities"
(Bloomberg) — Rents got cheaper in several major cities this past year, thanks to an influx of luxury apartment buildings opening their doors and luring tenants to vacate their old homes.
...More"AIA East Bay Awards: Multi-Family Honors Step-Up Housing"
We cannot be happier to formally present our award recipients from our 2025 Design Awards, celebrating the most innovative and impactful architectural projects of the year. After reviewing a staggering number of submissions, our panel of judges selected a diverse group of visionary designs that push the boundaries of creativity, sustainability, and functionality.
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"What the Twin Cities Tell Us About Fixing the Housing Crisis"
St. Paul enacted rent controls, and housing construction plummeted. Next-door Minneapolis generated a downtown boom without regulating rent.
...More"Developer buys former elementary school, wants to build ‘Painted Ladies of Berkeley’"
Patrick Kennedy, president of Panoramic Interests, told the Business Times that he wants to turn the site of a former elementary school into “the Berkeley version of the Painted Ladies.”
...More"How Berkeley turned firestorm housing fights into routine votes"
“When I started development at Berkeley 35 years ago, I would go to public meetings and be compared to Hitler, Attila the Hun — I’m not exaggerating,” chuckles Patrick Kennedy, a longtime local developer. “The local paper called [an eight-story building I built] a Stalinist monstrosity and monument to civic corruption.”
...More"Combining bold vision with soft infrastructure"
Sometimes I am an advocate for big, bold urban change. This is where I tend to be closely aligned with urbanists like Joe Berridge, co-founder of Urban Strategies. (We sat on a panel together this past October at the Council for Canadian Urbanism Forum, and I found myself agreeing with him on this point.)
...More"Bay Area homeowner beats $55,000 fee for expansion project after legal fight with city"
Wesley Yu had a plan to create multigenerational housing on his residential property in East Palo Alto. But after getting hit with a nearly $55,000 fee from the city, the small-scale project devolved into a legal fight — one that was eventually settled in his favor.
...More"Japanese zoning"
From April 2014
I will underline certain characteristics of Japanese zoning that makes it different from North American practices and that I find particularly interesting.
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