There is a story Americans like to tell about ourselves: that we love our cars, our cul-de-sacs, our three-car garages and two-car commutes. That we “chose” this. That suburban sprawl is the natural expression of an American preference for space, privacy, and the open road, and that anyone who suggests otherwise is a coastal scold trying to force us into a crowded apartment over a noisy bar.
Category Archives: Press
Idaho’s Big Housing Breakthrough Year
From ADUs to starter homes, lot splits to ‘manufactured in Idaho,’ Gem State leaders just opened up more housing options in a price-crunched state.
Why everyone loses money in real estate
Let’s get this out of the way. If your career is the buying, selling, developing or redeveloping of real estate, you will lose money one day. There are simply too many variables beyond your control — sometimes beyond your imagination — that can slam your project.
‘Hands off my Trader Joe’s’: Oakland neighborhood reels from plan to replace store with housing
Rockridge never saw it coming.
Residents and elected officials in the Oakland neighborhood said they were blindsided by the news Wednesday that a San Francisco developer had submitted plans to shutter the neighborhood’s two-decades-old Trader Joe’s store on a tree-lined stretch of College Avenue and replace it with two residential towers, the taller soaring to 31 stories.
Cheap Rooms Once Prevented Homelessness. We Need Them Back.
Inexpensive single-room-occupancy dwellings were common in America decades ago, but overregulation has driven them from the housing market.
The Rise of the Urban Knowledge Campus
To reinvigorate office life, large companies are relocating to mixed-use neighborhoods that offer easy access to transit, housing, and amenities.
The return of the American rowhome
My internet friend Bobby Fijan is one of the founders of a mission-driven company called The American Housing Corporation. It was founded in 2024. They opened their first factory in Austin in 2025, and they’re now actively working on their first collection of modular homes.
Housing Nearly Complete at 1752 Shattuck Avenue, North Berkeley
Construction is nearly finished for the seven-story apartment complex at 1752 Shattuck Avenue in North Berkeley, Alameda County. Leasing has started for the 68-unit development near Downtown Berkeley and the UC Berkeley campus. San Francisco-based Panoramic Interests is the project developer.
Toward more fine-grained development
Yesterday we spoke about the merits of fine-grained urbanism and why the direct and obvious way to achieve this is to just, you know, encourage more small-scale development. So today, let’s talk about some of the specific things that would likely need to happen in order to unlock all of the small and under-utilized sites that today are not being developed at scale.
Tall buildings lead to more compact and productive cities
Land-use regulations, including height limits, affect housing affordability and urban productivity. This column analyses over 11,000 urban agglomerations and 300,000 tall buildings to explore the effect of height restrictions on welfare.
