This past week Studio Gang unveiled its first project in Los Angeles, a curvaceous apartment (300 rental units) and hotel (149 rooms) tower in Chinatown. The developer is Paris-based Compagnie de Phalsbourg and the hotel component is expected to be operated by the European brand,… Read More
Boosted — which is a California-based company that makes electric skateboards — has just released a new smaller and more affordable version called the Mini S. Casey Neistat — who helped popularize the original models through his wildly successful YouTube channel — recently vlogged about… Read More
Today’s post is going to be a short add-on to yesterday’s post about the sinking Millennium Tower in San Francisco. Today, the New York Times published the below map showing the areas of the city likely to “liquefy in an earthquake.” It goes on to note that “at… Read More
Recently we’ve been talking about California’s Proposition 13 and how it may be creating a disincentive for longtime homeowners to move. They’re enjoying below market property taxes, and so they stay put, even if they may have too much house. But this concept of “overhousing” isn’t… Read More
I was out for drinks recently with a friend of mine who is a developer in California and she mentioned a few things to me that I thought were really interesting. First, she talked about how virtually nothing gets built in the Bay Area “as of… Read More
Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox recently published a piece in the Orange County Register called, “California’s housing crisis and the density delusion.” I’m sure you can guess where this is going, even if you don’t follow the work of Joel Kotkin. But if you do,… Read More
I am a big fan of Malcolm Gladwell, and not just because he’s Canadian and went to the University of Toronto (my alma mater), although those facts certainly don’t hurt. I’m late to his podcast, Revisionist History, so in case some of you are as… Read More
California State Senator, Scott Wiener, introduced 3 new bills at the beginning of this year intended to address the statewide housing shortage and continue the pivot from a housing-last agenda to a housing-first agenda. Here is a summary of the 3 bills: These three bills… Read More
Throughout US history, economic growth has typically spurred an “enormous reallocation of population.” Here is a graph from a recent New York Times article called: What Happened to the American Boomtown? The argument, here, is that restrictions on development have made it so that the most prosperous… Read More
The Equality of Opportunity Project has a recent paper out called: Who Becomes an Inventor in America? The importance of Exposure to Innovation. Vox also has a summary of the findings, here. The overall goal of the project is to “use big data to identify new… Read More
