Image by Josh Koonce licensed under Creative Commons.

Dominoes Pizza started a program to fill potholes in small towns — what does that say about state of US infrastructure funding? The Houston Chronicle's editorial board urges the city to ditch parking minimums. As the Supreme Court noted about defining pornography, defining what constitutes sprawl is surprisingly hard.

Filling potholes with pizza money: Dominoes Pizza gave $5,000 for road repairs to municipalities willing to take the cash, and ran ads on national television about filling potholes to get a pizza to its destination. It's an indictment of our current system that people are happy for a pizza chain to give money for much-needed repairs, rather than to use taxes. (Eater | Tim Forster)

Newspaper urges ditching parking standards: The Houston Chronicle editorial board is calling on Houston to eliminate parking minium requirements to reduce red tape for development. The editorial questions the city's free market status if it's going to have such rules, and expresses doubt that much parking is needed near good transit. (Houston Chronicle | Editorial Board)

Is it sprawl or smart growth?: An interesting question arises when trying to define new urban neighborhoods such as Stapleton in Denver, Colorado. If you were to look at the former airport land now that the neighborhood is built out, would it be considered sprawl or smart growth? (Colorado Real Estate Journal | John Rebchook)

Five types of residential architecture can address housing needs: In Seattle, architecture couple Mary and Ray Johnston reflect on several trends that are changing the way we think about housing. These include well transitioned and scaled buildings on a single block, accessory dwelling units, modular housing, high end design in high rises, and green building. (Seattle Times | Sandy Deneau Dunham)

The chasm between cities is growing: Cities like Dayton were not far behind coastal peers in per capita income at the start of 1980, but now there's a growing gap in income. As US cities with traditional economies were left to fend for themselves against cities with similar economies around the world, those with knowledge economies thrived. (Frontline | Alec MacGillis)

Quote of the Week

“In ways, the micromobility companies in the US that made calls from the Uber playbook were punished for arriving on the scene just as Uber was reining itself in—and cities would not get caught flat-footed again. By this summer, the entire footloose scooter experiment was grinding to a halt as cities threatened to seize the vehicles.”

Henry Grabar in Slate discussing whether the Uber strategy of asking for forgiveness instead of permission has hurt the micromobility movement.

This week on the podcast we read Lewis Wirth's article “Urbanism as a Way of Life” from the 1938 Journal of Sociology.