California Governor Gavin Newsom at the signing of multiple bills aimed at addressing the housing crisis in the state via Office of Governor Gavin Newsom

How the Affordable Housing and High Road Jobs Act could drastically increase California’s housing supply. Paris’ challenges and successes in centering people in its planning. Our parking addiction hurts the economy.

Peter Calthorpe’s housing shortage solution: In 2022, the California legislature passed AB 2011, the Affordable Housing and High Road Jobs Act of 2022. Behind the scenes, Peter Calthorpe, an architect and planner, and others were advocating for the bill, which would allow housing to be built on commercial properties around the state. After calculating the impacts of such a change on El Camino Real, a regional corridor, he realized that 250,000 residential units could be added on just this one road. (Martin C. Pederson | Common Edge)

Paris banned cars on some roads. How’s it working out?: Car trips have declined by 60% since 2001 in the heart of Paris, the largest metropolitan region in the European Union. The changes have been happening for a while, but Mayor Anne Hidalgo has taken the most credit as she enters her ninth year in the role. As a new low emissions zone is set to take effect with parking restrictions and changes in street design, merchants who have seen reduced business and suburbanites who drive are complaining the most. (Henry Grabar | Slate)

Addiction to parking hurts the economy: Jeral Posky believes you can tell what a society values by what they invest in. And in the United States, it seems as if cars are twice as valuable as people. He believes our parking addiction is also harming the economy as companies worry more about the next big car technology breakthrough rather than where all that money is going to park them. (Jeral Posky | Business Insider)

How cars are connected to social justice: In their book Cars and Jails: Freedom Dreams, Debt, and Carcerality, Julie Livingston and Andrew Ross write about how cars connect a lot of social justice issues including incarceration, debt, and surveillance. As they started out doing their research on incarceration and debt specifically, Livingston and Ross found that many of these issues of race and capitalism were connected by the requirement of driving for participation in American life. (Chenjerai Kumanyika | Public Books)

Liquid trees for cities: A post about “liquid trees” went viral last week after an image of an algae tank in Belgrade was shared on social media. Not intended to replace trees, the tank sucks carbon out of the atmosphere while producing oxygen and is easier to maintain and much more efficient in dense urban areas than new trees that can be challenging to grow. (Zachariah Kelly | Gizmodo Australia)

Quote of the Week

“As they did with Edith, travelers shove past me to get onto elevators. They play Solitaire or listen to music, buried in cell phones, oblivious as I swing around subway poles practically perpendicular with pain. My gyrations are not a “showtime” performance. I stab men in the foot with my cane so that they see me. They don’t look up. Women are more often the ones who offer their seats.”

Arlene Schulman in Next Avenue, discussing following Edith Prentiss’ fight for disability rights in New York City.

This week on the podcast, we’re joined by Oregon Metro Council President Lynn Peterson to talk about her book Roadways for People: Rethinking Transportation Planning and Engineering.