Edward Ring

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Read latest from PRI's Free Cities Center

Tejon Ranch’s CEQA battle offers warning for new Solano city

To cope with an ongoing and severe housing shortage, California’s Legislature has passed laws that override local zoning laws to make it easier for developers to construct high-density “infill” projects within existing cities. What California’s policymakers have not done, however, is encourage the development of new cities on raw land. One such
Blog

Greening the ‘food desert’ by farming vacant urban land

Greening the ‘food desert’ by farming vacant urban land Edward Ring | October 20, 2023 When it comes to food, America’s cities enjoy precarious abundance. We take for granted the remarkable system that allows us close proximity to chilled and gleaming shelves, loaded with apricots from Spain, avocados from Mexico,
Blog

How new city can change how California envisions its future: Part Two

How new city can change how California envisions its future: Part Two Edward Ring  |  September 29, 2023 Building a new city from scratch on 50,000 acres of cattle ranches is an audacious goal, even for the coterie of Silicon Valley billionaires who have been identified as behind the project.
Blog

How new city can change how California envisions its future: Part One

How new city can change how California envisions its future: Part One Edward Ring  |  September 22, 2023 It’s not news that California has a housing shortage, nor are the reasons for this shortage a mystery. For decades, California has restricted exurban development, passed building codes that are the most
Blog

America’s future cities: A case for decentralization

America’s future cities: A case for decentralization As the virulence of the COVID pandemic subsided in 2020, a new phrase, “urban doom loop,” became a common way to describe the failure of America’s downtowns to recover economically. The concept is simple enough. As occupancy in downtown buildings declines, businesses that
Blog

Harvesting Southern California rain can reinvigorate its cities

Harvesting Southern California rain can reinvigorate its cities By Edward Ring | July 27, 2023 It never rains in California But girl, don’t they warn ya? It pours, man, it pours —by Albert Hammond, 1972  “It Never Rains in Southern California“ Anyone who has experienced traffic on the Santa Monica
Blog

Read about CA's war on suburbs

To reduce costs, California also needs to build new suburbs

The three myths that have led to this predicament are the following: Nuclear power and natural gas power causes unacceptable harm to the environment; reservoirs and desalination plants cause unacceptable harm to the environment; and single-family homes nestled in sprawling suburbs cause unacceptable harm to the environment. These are myths.
Blog

Read latest from Free Cities Center

New cities offer unpredictable but exciting urban future

Although it was thoroughly lost amid his travails as the most prosecuted ex-president in American history, on March 4, in a video released on his campaign website, Donald Trump proposed a national contest for urban developers to submit designs for new “Freedom Cities,” with 10 winning designs to be allocated federal land
Blog

Automated vehicles: Driving us toward dystopia or utopia?

Humanity may be a long way from allowing an Artificial Intelligence program to navigate a spacecraft from Earth to the planet Jupiter, a trip of over a half-billion miles, but we’re very close to giving AI control of every other mode of transportation we’ve built to date here on Earth.
Blog

Here Come the Jetsons: Cities Developing in Futuristic Ways

Every since humans invented the built environment, and cities developed along major crossroads and on the forks of navigable rivers, meeting the challenge of providing adequate transportation has been a nonnegotiable prerequisite to continued growth and prosperity.
Blog

Read latest from PRI's Free Cities Center

Tejon Ranch’s CEQA battle offers warning for new Solano city

To cope with an ongoing and severe housing shortage, California’s Legislature has passed laws that override local zoning laws to make it easier for developers to construct high-density “infill” projects within existing cities. What California’s policymakers have not done, however, is encourage the development of new cities on raw land. One such
Blog

Greening the ‘food desert’ by farming vacant urban land

Greening the ‘food desert’ by farming vacant urban land Edward Ring | October 20, 2023 When it comes to food, America’s cities enjoy precarious abundance. We take for granted the remarkable system that allows us close proximity to chilled and gleaming shelves, loaded with apricots from Spain, avocados from Mexico,
Blog

How new city can change how California envisions its future: Part Two

How new city can change how California envisions its future: Part Two Edward Ring  |  September 29, 2023 Building a new city from scratch on 50,000 acres of cattle ranches is an audacious goal, even for the coterie of Silicon Valley billionaires who have been identified as behind the project.
Blog

How new city can change how California envisions its future: Part One

How new city can change how California envisions its future: Part One Edward Ring  |  September 22, 2023 It’s not news that California has a housing shortage, nor are the reasons for this shortage a mystery. For decades, California has restricted exurban development, passed building codes that are the most
Blog

America’s future cities: A case for decentralization

America’s future cities: A case for decentralization As the virulence of the COVID pandemic subsided in 2020, a new phrase, “urban doom loop,” became a common way to describe the failure of America’s downtowns to recover economically. The concept is simple enough. As occupancy in downtown buildings declines, businesses that
Blog

Harvesting Southern California rain can reinvigorate its cities

Harvesting Southern California rain can reinvigorate its cities By Edward Ring | July 27, 2023 It never rains in California But girl, don’t they warn ya? It pours, man, it pours —by Albert Hammond, 1972  “It Never Rains in Southern California“ Anyone who has experienced traffic on the Santa Monica
Blog

Read about CA's war on suburbs

To reduce costs, California also needs to build new suburbs

The three myths that have led to this predicament are the following: Nuclear power and natural gas power causes unacceptable harm to the environment; reservoirs and desalination plants cause unacceptable harm to the environment; and single-family homes nestled in sprawling suburbs cause unacceptable harm to the environment. These are myths.
Blog

Read latest from Free Cities Center

New cities offer unpredictable but exciting urban future

Although it was thoroughly lost amid his travails as the most prosecuted ex-president in American history, on March 4, in a video released on his campaign website, Donald Trump proposed a national contest for urban developers to submit designs for new “Freedom Cities,” with 10 winning designs to be allocated federal land
Blog

Automated vehicles: Driving us toward dystopia or utopia?

Humanity may be a long way from allowing an Artificial Intelligence program to navigate a spacecraft from Earth to the planet Jupiter, a trip of over a half-billion miles, but we’re very close to giving AI control of every other mode of transportation we’ve built to date here on Earth.
Blog

Here Come the Jetsons: Cities Developing in Futuristic Ways

Every since humans invented the built environment, and cities developed along major crossroads and on the forks of navigable rivers, meeting the challenge of providing adequate transportation has been a nonnegotiable prerequisite to continued growth and prosperity.
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