Three Reasons to Free Streets From Cars - As Syracuse plans to reserve more of its streets for buses, bikers, and people on foot, it’s important to be clear about why that’s a good idea. There are at least three different reasons to keep cars off a city street. To make an intersection safer Intersections where lots of streets meet at odd angles … Continue reading Three Reasons to Free Streets From Cars →
Walking to the Market - It was 5 degrees Saturday morning, but people still walked to the Farmers Market. They put up with the cold, the unsafe streets, and the snow-covered sidewalks because the Market provides access to good cheap food, and because Saturday’s weather was too common to change anybody’s weekly routine. And if people were willing to walk … Continue reading Walking to the Market →
Apartments Go Up and Rents Come Down - Two new residential projects planned for Downtown’s eastern edge indicate that developers may have finally run out of tenants willing and able to pay $2,000 a month to live in the city center, and now they’re building more affordable apartments. For a full decade, this didn’t feel possible. Every single new apartment project got a … Continue reading Apartments Go Up and Rents Come Down →
Trouble with the Curb - In the 2020 State of the City address, Mayor Ben Walsh announced that City Hall is going to try and find a way to take full responsibility for sidewalk maintenance and snow removal, and he announced that City Hall is going to repair a lot more pavement. These two promises have the potential to remake … Continue reading Trouble with the Curb →
ReZone and Syracuse’s Housing Shortage - There aren’t enough places to live in many Syracuse neighborhoods, and the City’s new zoning ordinance needs to help do something about it. Between 2000 and 2016, in 18 census tracts containing ⅓ of the City’s population, the number of people looking for a place to live increased faster than did the total number of … Continue reading ReZone and Syracuse’s Housing Shortage →
Safe Streets without Traffic Law Enforcement - Car-drivers break the law all the time. They speed, they roll through stop signs, they run red lights, they drive over crosswalks while people are trying to cross them on foot. They do all that because it’s accepted and expected behavior, even though it’s also dangerous and illegal behavior. In a better world, this is … Continue reading Safe Streets without Traffic Law Enforcement →
Tax Downtown Parking Lots Out of Existence - Property owners enjoy a de facto tax break when they waste valuable land Downtown by using it as a parking lot instead of something more productive. Take these two lots on the 200 block of East Washington Street. Lot A is a Bank and Lot B is a surface parking lot. City Hall says that … Continue reading Tax Downtown Parking Lots Out of Existence →
ReZone’s Final Draft - Last week City Hall released the final draft of its new zoning ordinance and zoning map. This new draft includes some big changes on parking, transit oriented development, and housing opportunity. Parking City Hall should eliminate parking minimums entirely. They’re regressive, expensive, polluting regulations that subsidize car ownership at the expense of the poorest people … Continue reading ReZone’s Final Draft →
Walking to Armory Square - Syracuse City Hall is working with the SMTC to make it easier for people to walk around Armory Square. That’s great news! Lots of people get around that area on foot, and they often have to put up with cars blocking the crosswalks, speeding down the street, failing to yield to pedestrians at stop signs, … Continue reading Walking to Armory Square →
How Valuable is Street Parking, Really? - This week, the Common Council passed a budget that will raise the prices drivers pay to park at the curb. The higher parking meter rates are supposed to bring in $600,000. City Hall needs that money to keep property taxes under the state cap. In this way, the Common Council is treating parking meters primarily … Continue reading How Valuable is Street Parking, Really? →
Accounting For Parking’s Costs - Too much parking is a bad thing. It spreads people and buildings farther apart so that it’s difficult to deliver municipal services, it undermines public transportation by artificially reducing the cost of driving, and it reduces housing opportunity in good neighborhoods by wasting land on car storage. Those costs are spread out over the entire … Continue reading Accounting For Parking’s Costs →
Ending the Spatial Mismatch in Syracuse - Syracuse needs better bus service that empowers all kinds of people to meet all their different daily needs. One of those daily needs is getting to work. In a recent hearing on the effectiveness of public transportation in Syracuse, Assemblymember Pam Hunter addressed that directly when she asked about how Centro could overcome the spatial mismatch—the … Continue reading Ending the Spatial Mismatch in Syracuse →
Exclusionary Zoning in One Neighborhood Will Gentrify Another - With all the new apartment buildings going up on Syracuse’s Eastside, it seemed like a fluke that one planned for Westcott Street never got past the drawing board. It wasn’t. That apartment building didn’t get built because of exclusionary zoning policies that prohibit new housing in some places and concentrate it in others. As Syracuse … Continue reading Exclusionary Zoning in One Neighborhood Will Gentrify Another →
Writing ReZone for Better Bus Service - Buses work best where there are lots of people, businesses, and institutions all within walking distance of each other. Zoning laws that allow a mix of people, businesses, and institutions work best in places with good bus service. Transportation planning and land use planning go hand in hand. In Syracuse, the left hand doesn’t seem … Continue reading Writing ReZone for Better Bus Service →
The Green New Deal, Housing, and Transportation in Onondaga County - Congress is full of new members talking about a Green New Deal—a “broad and ambitious package of new policies and investments in communities, infrastructure, and technology to help the United States achieve environmental sustainability and economic stability.” The ideas for those new policies include regulations on carbon emissions, subsidies for alternative energy, and wetland reclamation. … Continue reading The Green New Deal, Housing, and Transportation in Onondaga County →
Flexibility is Adaptability is Resiliency - I used to rent a one-bedroom apartment on the back end of a building on the City’s Northside. The building had been a standard Syracuse double-decker—two identical three-bedroom apartments stacked one on top of the other—but at some point the owner split the second floor into two one-bedroom apartments. That was good for me because … Continue reading Flexibility is Adaptability is Resiliency →
Two Views of Syracuse’s Future - 2019 will see two policy announcements that will shape Syracuse for decades to come. New York State plans to let us all know what it’ll do to replace I81’s downtown viaduct, and Syracuse City Hall plans to adopt its first new zoning ordinance since 1922. With each of these the community has the choice to … Continue reading Two Views of Syracuse’s Future →
ReZone’s Rules for Rowhouses - Rowhouses combine many of the benefits of both single-family and multi-family housing. They all have first floors at ground level, so everybody gets a front stoop and a backyard, and the houses don’t take up much space, so many families can live within walking distance of schools, shops, and bus stops. But not all rowhouses … Continue reading ReZone’s Rules for Rowhouses →
Alleys for Neighborhoods - Bank Alley is different from a lot of the other streets Downtown. It’s not like Salina or Fayette–wide streets that are good for getting across town–and it’s not like Clinton or Adams–one-way racetracks for cars getting to or from the elevated highways. It’s short and narrow and a lot calmer than the rest of the … Continue reading Alleys for Neighborhoods →
Making Land Useful - In 1919, Syracuse’s Planning Commission published a report on the work that it had already done and its plans for the City’s future. That report contained some big ideas for massive public works projects, but most of its pages dealt with the minutiae of subdividing undeveloped plots of land on the City’s outskirts to accommodate … Continue reading Making Land Useful →

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