NIMBY wrap-up for the week of Tuesday, September 3rd

This interview with our pal Gerald Frug is the required reading of the week. Why? Because, as Frug succinctly puts it in the interview: "the organization of the tax system generates particular kinds of urban development, and the state organizes the tax systems for cities. People who care about cities would do well to understand the law and the structure of government if they want to create any kind of change." Amen.

Another pal of ours--Damon Rich, Urban Planning Director for the City of Newark--gave us a newspaper foldout about Newark, NJ's proposed new SAFE SPACE, which would aim to foster a secure environment for LGBTQ youth. Safe Spaces have worked well for classrooms; why not try it out on an entire city? Go Newark!

A Neo-Nazi plans to build an all-white city of racists in North Dakota: that's actually a headline! Not included in the story though is any suggestion about how said neo-nazi would do this. Hopefully he hasn't been reading this blog, which is actually full of ideas for how to undermine, ignore, and subvert the Fair Housing Act (sometimes legally). Really though, we're curious: will they go for a BLOOD RELATIVE ORDINANCE? Or will they opt for COVENANTS, CONDITIONS, AND RESTRICTIONS? Or will they try to be more subtle, and embed the city with nazi-friendly EXCLUSIONARY AMENITIES?  

This map of racial segregation has been making the rounds this week. We're not sure if it is, as Wired declared, the "The Best Map Ever Made of America’s Racial Segregation," but it's pretty good.