Free Cities

Denver wisely repeals its minimum parking mandates By Sal Rodriguez  |  November 7, 2025 The post-World War II years brought with it many things Americans have taken for granted: economic prosperity, suburban living and minimum parking requirements. Along with the growing prevalence of personal vehicles through the 1950s and 1960s ...

Western governors try to boost housing as population grows By D. Dowd Muska | October 31, 2025 What do Houston, Los Angeles, San Antonio, Fort Worth, Phoenix, Seattle, San Jose and Las Vegas have in common? U.S. Census Bureau data show that each made the list of the 15 cities ...

Tucker Carlson, for one, has been for years carping about corporations buying single-family homes. In 2021, when he still had a show on Fox News, Carlson objected to “private-equity firms like BlackRock” buying “entire neighborhoods of single-family homes and turning them into rentals.” His guest that evening was Chronicles Magazine’s Pedro Gonzalez, ...

Prop. 50 will reduce the voting strength of cities and counties By Daniel M. Kolkey  |  October 24, 2025 Proposition 50 – an admitted gerrymander of California’s congressional districts that is the subject of November 4’s special election – will not only harm voters by making our congressional districts less ...

It’s long been obvious that America’s history with government-run housing projects has been an unmitigated disaster. They were quite the rage when I grew up around Philadelphia in the 1960s and 1970s, but these public-housing projects always ended up as dangerous, poorly designed, soulless and racially segregated – places that ...

If you build it, they will socialize? Public spaces and loneliness By D. Dowd Muska  | October 17, 2025 Urbanists have a new item for cities’ to-do lists: Fix America’s loneliness crisis. And their preferred tool? Public spaces. The William Penn Foundation’s Shawn McCaney is typical. He believes the nation’s ...

Congestion pricing an open question, but equity concerns are bogus by Rafael Perez | October 10, 2025 New York City in January became the first city in America to implement congestion charges in an effort to curb traffic, reduce pollution and raise funds to improve transit systems. Los Angeles is ...

Yes In God’s Back Yard: YIGBYs fight for more housing by D. Dowd Muska | October 3, 2025 When it’s time to thwart an unwanted land use, NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yarders) consult a list of hardy perennials. Parking. Traffic. Crime. Noise. Property values. “Preserving the character of the ...

California’s property insurance market had been on the precipice before the massive wildfires wreaked havoc in Pacific Palisades and Altadena this year, with insurers fleeing the state following a series of costly wildfires from 2017 to 2021. January’s fires were among the worst in the state’s history, with estimated industry ...