Rhode Island state leaders are considering using public funds for affordable housing development after voters approved a $120 million housing bond that includes $10 million for public housing development.

As Jared Brey explains in Governing, “While it’s not clear exactly how the program will work, or even whether it will happen, advocates have been pushing for the state to create a public development entity similar to one used in Montgomery County, Maryland. There, the county invests directly in mixed-income housing projects, and instead of profiting off the market-rate units, it uses the income to subsidize reduced rents for lower-income people and reinvests its equity in other projects.”

More cities and states are experimenting with funding models that can support affordable housing even in the absence of federal assistance (President-elect Trump has proposed further cuts to housing vouchers and other federal assistance programs).

As the pandemic exacerbated the housing crisis, Rhode Island put more funding into affordable housing, investing $330 million in American Rescue Act dollars in housing programs. However, this only produced roughly 1,500 new housing units, signaling the inefficiency of the existing development system. Proponents of a state development entity suggest it could help direct state funds more effectively to mixed-income developments.

• Housing Bonds
• Affordable Housing
• Public Housing
• Housing Supply
• housing affordability

What if your living room could transform into a full-blown movie theater, a gaming den, or the ultimate party zone with just one device? Meet the XGODY Gimbal 3 Smart Mini Projector.

Compact, portable, and packed with features, this mini projector is your ticket to an immersive big-screen experience—without the big price tag. At just $69.99 (down from $169) and with free shipping, it’s the perfect upgrade for anyone who loves movies, gaming, or entertaining in style.

You’ve probably seen it on TikTok or Instagram: sleek, wall-mounted setups with glowing visuals turning ordinary walls into spectacular screens. The XGODY Gimbal 3 is the perfect gadget for this trend. Its 180-degree rotating lens and automatic keystone correction make it easy to project the ideal image, whether mounted on a wall, placed on a table, or propped up outdoors for a backyard movie night.

The XGODY Gimbal 3 also connects seamlessly to devices like PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch via HDMI, delivering lag-free, larger-than-life gaming. Add in the ability to sync your favorite apps through its Android 11 OS, and this projector becomes your entertainment hub, ready for Netflix marathons or TikTok-inspired dance parties.

This isn’t just for cozy movie nights (although it’s great for that, too). The XGODY Gimbal 3 is a hit for gatherings. Hosting a birthday party? Stream photos and videos for a personalized touch. Throwing a game night? Pair it with your console for some serious multiplayer action. With its Bluetooth connectivity, you can even hook it up to external speakers for richer, more immersive sound.

Thanks to its Wi-Fi 6 compatibility, you’ll never have to deal with buffering at the worst moments. The connection is smooth, the visuals are clear, and your guests will be asking where you got this little tech marvel.

Pick up the XGODY Smart Mini Projector for just $69.99 and order through 11:59 p.m. PT on Dec. 15 for on-time Christmas delivery. 

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The post Keep a movie theater in your bag with this mini smart projector appeared first on Popular Science.

The effects of climate change are imminent, and cities are responsible for changing how they operate to improve their carbon footprints. However, city planners often face challenges in designing and executing sustainable retrofits while preserving their heritage.

Retrofitting initiatives often present challenges in cities.

Due to the complexity of the technologies, retrofitting a historic urban environment could be expensive. For example, to retrofit a permeable pavement, the original material will be removed, which means the city pays for the removal and installation costs. This is economically unattractive, especially since green methods mostly only show long-term cost-effectiveness and are subjective to the users.

Even with renewable energy retrofit in buildings, cost savings depend on residents' actions. A person setting the air conditioner temperature at 70 degrees Fahrenheit might see reduced energy bills faster than someone who sets it at 60 degrees F.

Many old cities are rife with buildings with historical and cultural significance. Retrofitting these could change their classic features, which many may consider disrespectful. For example, installing green windows may mean removing stained glass.

Implementing sustainable technology without compromising historical integrity requires awareness, expertise and efficiency. However, heritage quality and sustainability can sometimes be mutually exclusive, so planners might need to let go of one to prioritize the other.

Many still need to learn about modern sustainable technology. For example, in the U.K., almost 33.3% of people think gas is a form of green heating and 70% don’t know what heat pumps are.

This also contributes to a need for more experts in designing and implementing comprehensive and efficient urban retrofitting projects. In the U.S., 47 cities list green jobs without relevant strategies in their climate action plan. Some even omit the need for these jobs.

Another consequence of the lack of awareness is inadequate resources to execute these projects. Stakeholders generally don’t invest in these technologies because they don’t see the purpose and don’t engage in overcoming the hurdles of retrofitting old cities.

Reimagining old cities for environmental sustainability may be complex, but it’s possible when done effectively. Here are some multi-pronged strategies to plan a historic urban retrofit.

Urban planners must ensure stakeholders are committed to improving the city’s sustainability. Educating them on the benefits of retrofitting to improve public health is necessary. For example, air pollution — a consequence of global warming — causes 7 million premature deaths yearly. Education could also lead to hiring more experts and investing in relevant technologies.

Innovations are expanding in urban sustainability, and planners should research and choose the right technologies to match a city’s build and potential.  These technologies should also not compromise the area's aesthetics and heritage value. One example is the automatic waste collection system, which reduces garbage trucks’ carbon footprint and keeps the building visually untouched.

Retrofitting projects are costly, so planners must widen their options by researching financial opportunities such as green bonds, tax exemptions and government incentives like pollution-reduction subsidies in the U.S. Planners can also have investor talks to improve their risk perception and explain the long-term cost-effectiveness, like how energy efficiency contributes to a 12%-17% decrease in operating expenses.

Many cities are moving toward a sustainable approach in their operations. An example is Copenhagen, Denmark — one of the world's most sustainable cities.

It has many retrofit projects, such as redesigning the Copenhagen Harbour into swimming pools and the district heating network in 2014. In addition, Tokyo, Japan, also prioritizes urban sustainability with a pledge to implement renewable power in buildings and use hydrogen produced by these energy sources for urban development.

Sustainability is crucial for cities to operate efficiently. To this end, stakeholders and urban planners must work together to balance heritage and green efforts.

• Historic Preservation
• Sustainability
• Retrofits
• Energy Efficiency
• Resilience
• Renewable Energy
• Historic Cities

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You’re probably familiar with your iPhone’s Do Not Disturb feature. The Focus mode feature works like  a more customizable version of Do Not Disturb. In fact, Do Not Disturb is actually one of the Focus modes you can choose from.

The various Focus modes take the basic idea of Do Not Disturb—shutting off notifications on your phone—and build on it. You get the option to set different settings for a variety of scenarios: Driving, exercising, working, or whatever you want.

You might not want any interruptions at the gym, for example. At the office, you might only let Slack and Outlook ping you. While you’re driving, only your family can contact you. The feature reflects the different stages of each day.

And that brings us to Sleep Focus: A particular mode designed for nighttime, with a few extras attached: Not only can you set who is allowed to contact you and who isn’t, you can also use it to build up a healthier, more regular sleep pattern.

You can have multiple Sleep Focus modes on your iPhone: You might have one for weekdays, one for weekends, and one for when you’re on vacation, for example. Head to Settings on your iPhone, then tap Focus and Sleep. If you don’t see Sleep listed, tap + (the plus icon, top right), then Sleep and Customize Focus.

Next, you can set the rules for this mode, as you can for any other Focus mode. Tap People, and you can select specific contacts who are allowed to get in touch with you while the Sleep Focus mode is active, and specific contacts who aren’t. Select Apps, and you can do the same for apps (remember many apps will have their own notification rule settings you can configure as well).

Further down is an Options menu: From here you’re able to customize how silenced notifications are handled—those are the alerts that aren’t allowed to distract you, based on the People and Apps settings. You can choose hide notification badges, for example, and hide these notifications from the lock screen.

Additional customizations can be added by tapping Choose under the Lock Screen or Home Screen thumbnails—your iPhone can then switch to a specific lock screen or home screen when Sleep Focus is active (maybe one with fewer distractions). There’s another Options menu here, which lets you enable a special Sleep Screen lock screen: A simplified version of your current lock screen that hides the wallpaper.

The last bit of customization on offer is the Add Filter button. Tap this and you can tell certain apps and system settings how to behave when Sleep Focus is enabled: So you can always switch to a more limited tab group in Safari, for example, or always have dark mode turn itself on at the same time.

You can also set a sleep schedule to go alongside your Sleep Focus mode, if you want: This means Sleep Focus kicks in automatically at certain times of the day, saving you having to enable it manually (though you can do that too), and hopefully ensuring you get to bed at a consistent time each night.

This sleep schedule will be displayed on the Sleep Focus setup page, but you actually need to head over to the Health app to configure it. In the Health app, tap Browse > Sleep > Sleep Schedule, then turn on the toggle switch. You’ll then get another toggle switch that sets whether or not your Sleep Focus mode and sleep schedule work in tandem.

With the feature enabled, you can customize it: Tap Add Schedule to create a new schedule, or Edit to change an existing one. This is where you can set your phone up to work differently on different days of the week. Each schedule can have different times for getting to bed and getting up, and you have the option to set an accompanying alarm on your phone for each schedule.

Further down the screen you can set up prompts, reminders, and tracking for your sleep schedule—essentially telling iOS (and your connected Apple Watch, if you have one), how much help you’d like to stick to the schedule. You can choose to set a sleep goal for each night, for instance, which the Health app will keep track of.

If you link Sleep Focus with your sleep schedule, then it’ll turn on automatically. If you ever need to to turn Sleep Focus on or off manually, swipe down from the top right of the screen to access Control Center, then tap Focus and Sleep (tap the three dots next to Sleep then Settings if you want to customize it first).

The post How to set up iPhone Sleep Focus mode for some peace and quiet appeared first on Popular Science.

Just as you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, it’s unfair to judge a cat by its fur color. Yet humans seem to have a sweet spot for orange cats. Videos of their antics fill the internet, and gingers get the leading roles in TV and movies too (think: Garfield, Heathcliff, and Puss in Boots). A 2012 survey found that people are more likely to view orange cats as friendly compared to other cats. But despite their popularity, the genetic basis of their striking fur color has puzzled scientists for decades. 

In humans, reddish orange hair has been linked to certain variants of the melanocortin-1 receptor (MC1R) gene. This gene controls the production of melanin, the pigment that gives hair, skin, and eyes their color, by cells called melanocytes. These cells can make one of two forms of melanin—the red/yellow pheomelanin and the black/brown eumelanin. With particular variants of the MC1R gene, melanocytes produce mostly pheomelanin, leading to red hair and fair skin.

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It would be simple to assume that the MC1R gene is also responsible for orange fur in cats—but this is not the case. Scientists noticed that most cats with multicolor coats, like calicos or tortoiseshells, are female. This led them to believe that the genes for orange and black fur are on the X chromosome. Since females have two X chromosomes, they can inherit different fur color genes from their parents, creating mixed colors. Males, with only one X chromosome, usually have fur that’s all one color, orange or black, based on the gene they get from their mother. Since the MC1R is not on the X chromosome in cats, it cannot be the gene that causes orange fur.

To figure out what causes orange fur in cats, geneticist Greg Barsh and his team at Stanford University studied the DNA on the X chromosome of male orange cats. They found that all of them had a specific stretch of DNA, about 1.28 million base pairs long, that was the same. Inside this region, they identified 51 unique DNA variants that orange cats have but non-orange cats don’t have. However, 48 of these variants also appear in some breeds that don’t have orange or calico fur, so they can’t be linked to orange fur color. This allowed Barsh’s team to narrow it down to three DNA variants. Two of these were in parts of the DNA that don’t seem to affect how genes work, but the third—a deletion of about 5,000 base pairs—was located near the Arhgap36 gene. The proximity of this deletion to a working gene made it more likely to be the cause of orange fur.

Barsh and his colleagues saw that all 145 orange cats they studied, as well as 6 calico and tortoiseshell cats (which also have orange patches), had the same stretch of missing DNA near the Arhgap36 gene, while 37 non-orange cats did not. 

They then analyzed skin samples from orange and non-orange cat fetuses and found that the Arhgap36 gene was much more active, producing 13 times more RNA protein, in the melanocytes of orange cats compared to those of non-orange cats. So the deletion of nearby DNA must make the Arhgap36 gene more active. 

But how is this gene linked to orange fur? 

Further experiments showed that when Arhgap36 is more active, it weakens the effects of the MC1R gene, which normally controls melanin production, and instructs melanocytes to produce red/yellow pheomelanin instead of black/brown eumelanin, the researchers reported in a preprint posted on bioRxiv in November 2024.

Surprisingly, another research group, led by developmental biologist Hiroyuki Sasaki at Kyushu University in Japan, independently discovered the same genetic characteristic associated with orange fur at the same time. They also published their findings on bioXriv. Both studies will now need to go through peer review to verify the findings.

“The fact that two groups independently identified the same gene suggests that it is likely correct,” Jonathan Losos, an evolutionary biologist at Washington University in St. Louis, tells Popular Science.

This finding could generate important research into when orange fur color first appeared, says Losos. “Now that we know the gene for orange, we can look for it in ancient DNA studies of cat specimens from archaeological sites.”  

“More generally, we can investigate the evolutionary significance of orange color,” he adds. 

Scientists have known since 1961 that the multicolor fur coats seen in calico and tortoiseshell cats is due to a phenomenon in female mammals called X chromosome inactivation, where one of the two X chromosomes in each cell is randomly inactivated. In cats carrying two different color genes, one black and one orange, X inactivation causes different colors to be expressed in different parts of the body. “We’ve known that was happening for a long time, but now that we know the actual gene, we can get a much more detailed explanation about how the variegation is actually produced,” says Losos.

At minimum, this discovery likely confirms that orange cats truly have something that sets them apart from other cats. And, as Losos notes, “it’s a big breakthrough that opens the door to a lot of interesting studies.”

This story is part of Popular Science’s Ask Us Anything series, where we answer your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the ordinary to the off-the-wall. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.

The post Why do some cats have orange fur? New hue clues in an old mystery. appeared first on Popular Science.

• Gnome


• Garden gnome


• Non-humanoid gnome


• Gnome statue

• Sasquatch


• Yeti


• Dragon


• Minotaur


• Unicorn


• Hydra


• Ogre


• Leprechaun


• Goblin


• Phoenix


• Hippogriff


• Hellhound


• Manticore (but not really)


• Sphinx


• Bunyip


• Elf

• Mermaid


• Wendigo


• Kraken (Sea monster works instead)


• Wyvern


• Basilisk


• Cockatrice


• Chupacabra


• Tanuki


• Jackalope


• Wolpertinger


• Wampus


• Chimera


• Ouroboros


• Golem

• Vampire


• Werewolf


• Centaur


• Orc


• Fairy


• Selkie (just generated a standard person)


• Anubis (just generated a standard person)

• Scrumptious - ‌Genmoji‌ made a rainbow-colored plate with bread, a pumpkin, a tomato, and what looks like an olive. The next several images generated were cakes, and there was also a present and a plate of pasta.


• Delicious - It gave me a steak on a weird pan, a cake, a donut, a cupcake, and a hot air balloon.


• Cuddly - This generated a bear, a bear with flowers, a sleeping cat, a bunny in a basket, a mouse with heart eyes, and an emoji face wrapped in a blanket.


• Snuggly - The first option I got was a smiling face, followed by emoji faces wrapped in blankets.


• Comforting - An arm chair, a rocking chair, a sunset, and several weird emoji faces, none of which are comforting.


• Horrific - A purple monster, a spider with 10 legs, an alien-like emoji face with 10 tentacles, a glowing crystal, a fanged octopus with six legs, and a snake with a fork.

• Gnome - It worked, but with "statue of a gnome" phrasing.


• Foam - It didn't have a smiley face, but I kind of got there by specifying a pile of shaving cream with eyes and a smile.


• Pink comb


• Skeleton made of chrome


• Dog balloon - I only got a dog holding a balloon until I changed to balloon animal dog.


• Tomato spy - This sort of worked when I used "a tomato dressed like a detective wearing sunglasses," but I could not get a full body tomato spy.


• A horse wearing a tie


• Bucatini with some peas - Most of what it generated looked nothing like pasta, but I did get a pasta-adjacent thing topped with peas.


• Anemones - Just anemones gave me a flower. I had to add sea to get anything resembling Apple's, but even then it looked nothing like an actual sea anemone.


• Blocks of cheese


• Anemones and blocks of cheese bumping MP3s - It did generate a block of cheese and a sea anemone wearing headphones, but I had to use the "wearing headphones" phrasing. The sea anemone didn't look anything like one.


• Pig in the sky - This worked a lot better when I added "winged."


• Clock that can talk - This kind of worked when I asked it to make a grandfather clock with a mouth and eyes, but not with just a clock that can talk. It still didn't look like Apple's.


• A furry cardigan - When I described it as a "furry cardigan that's light pink and has embroidered flowers," I got something like Apple's image.


• Lasso - It generated ropes in circle shapes, but none that were exactly lassos.


• Candy pile - It made candy, but they were all mostly a pile of gumballs


• Can of worms - I thought this would turn out well, but it mostly made cans that had a worm on the front. My favorite was a yellow can with an emoji face that had worms coming out of the mouth.


• Golden smile - Apple's image is a gold tooth. I only got an emoji face when using "golden smile," but I got a creepy gold tooth with a face when I used "gold tooth smiling."

• Socrates on mountain skis - Without fail, trying this made me select a person, and it came out looking nothing like Socrates. I couldn't use a historical figure at all.


• 12-sided die - It could not make a die that looked different from a standard die. It also would not let me use "12-sided die" at all, but at least "twelve sided die" made dice.


• Chair that can walk - I couldn't get it to generate a chair that had human-like legs with shoes. It just kept making standard chairs.


• A little painting of a guy in a hat - It kept adding an emoji person with just the head and shoulders. I couldn't get a nondescript "guy in a hat."


• A heart-shaped tat - I only got emoji hearts. One was a realistic heart (the organ) with a pen through it that was inventive, but not what I was looking for.


• Gizmo - This was a straight no. It told me to describe something different.


• Little egg man throws his hands in the air going wild - This got me an emoji character of myself juggling eggs. Adding "man" triggers the person feature. Taking out man got me an egg with arms, but not a fried egg. Adding fried got me a creepy egg with a face and arms.

Know someone who dreams of a quicker, comfier way to get around town? The Phantom Commuter R1 Pro is here to make their commute as easy as sitting down! With a built-in seat, powerful 500W motor, and max speed of 15.5 mph, this e-scooter on sale for over half off at $289.99 (reg. $599) turns any trip into a breeze—no standing required.

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The post This discounted e-scooter is perfect for anyone who loves shortcuts (and hates parking) appeared first on Popular Science.

For social animals like humans, it’s critical to be able to recognize and react to the emotional state of others. One particularly important aspect of this ability is empathy—which, in this context, refers specifically to understanding when another person is in emotional distress. 

However, individuals can respond in very different ways to seeing someone in such distress. These responses fall into two broad categories. There are prosocial responses: reaching out to the person in distress to provide care and comfort. However, there are also antisocial responses, where seeing someone in distress triggers similar distress and emotional pain in the witness, leading them to recoil from the situation to focus on their own emotions.

The nature of a person’s response is strongly influenced by their own history—and, specifically, whether they’ve had a similar experience to the one they’re witnessing. A new paper published December 12 in Nature Neuroscience explores the neurocognitive basis for how “negative self-experiences” affect responses to emotional distress in others.

The ability to recognize and react to others’ emotions is not confined to humans—many other mammals demonstrate similar facilities. However, it’s been less clear to what extent negative self-experience plays a role in other animals. The paper’s authors examined whether it affected mice’s responses to seeing others in stressful situations and found that the experience does indeed seem to have effects similar to those in humans. This suggests that empathy in humans may well have similar neurological foundations to empathy in mice.

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The researchers found that on the whole, the mice that the paper refers to as “negative self-experienced”—i.e. those who had had an experience similar to the one they were witnessing—tended to display more antisocial, avoidant behavior than than “naïve” mice that had not had the same experience. 

They also found that hormones and social hierarchy played a role in the effects of negative self-experience. In males, position in the social hierarchy was important; dominant male mice tended more to antisocial responses than other males. Female mice, meanwhile, were affected by estrus (heat), with those in estrus appearing to be completely unaffected by negative self-experience.

The study also investigated the neurological basis for these results. In humans, the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) plays an important role in moderation of stress and also in social cognition, so the researchers theorized that the same may be true for mice. To test this idea, they suppressed the activity of the mPFC in some of the mice–and specifically, a group of neurons that produce a hormone called corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF), which is known to be involved in responses to stress (the paper describes it as “a master regulator of stress-coping responses.”)

[ Related: How video game tech, AI, and computer vision help decode animal pain and behavior ]

When the researchers inhibited the functioning of these neurons, they found that these negative self-experienced mice showed an increased tendency toward prosocial responses: “[This] re-established the amount of social exploration toward stress demonstrators, which was reduced in the negative self-experienced … group.” They also found that inhibiting these neurons increased prosocial responses in “naïve” mice—i.e. those who did not have negative self-experience. Deliberately activating these cells, by contrast, had no effect on naïve mice, but increased avoidant behavior in mice with negative self-experience.

The paper concludes that in mice, the “influence of self-experience on stress emotion recognition is modulated by CRF activity in the mPFC.” Given that the similar roles that the mPFC and CRF play in humans, Federica Maltese–first author of the study–said in a statement that targeting mPFC CRF neurons might “aid clinical research in developing new targeted therapies aimed at improving the altered emotional responses observed in various psychiatric conditions.” Identifying the neurocognitive foundations of empathy could also open up new possibilities for treatment of conditions where empathy and understanding of others’ emotions are suppressed, such as PTSD, autism, and schizophrenia.

The post Past experiences strongly affect empathy in mice  appeared first on Popular Science.

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Finding the perfect holiday gift for the adventurer in your life isn’t always easy. Socks? Boring. A multi-tool? Predictable. Enter these 4K night-vision digital binoculars for $99.99 (reg. $169) — a gadget so cool it might just make you the holiday MVP. Just be sure to purchase it before December 15 to make sure it arrives in time to put it under the tree.

These binoculars aren’t your average pair. With 4K resolution and 8X digital zoom, they let you see crisp, clear details even in total darkness. Campers, hunters, and wildlife enthusiasts can track nocturnal animals or navigate late-night hikes with ease. Stargazers? They’ll love using these to scan the night sky for cosmic wonders.

But the fun doesn’t stop at sightseeing. These binoculars also capture high-quality photos and videos, so every epic moment is preserved. Whether it’s snapping a shot of an owl mid-flight or recording the dazzling glow of the northern lights, it’s all just a button press away.

The lightweight design and included neck strap make them easy to carry, while the built-in rechargeable battery ensures hours of exploration. Plus, they’re rugged enough to handle all kinds of adventures—think rainy camping trips or frosty winter nights.

Perfect for holiday gifting, these digital binoculars are a win for anyone with a knack for exploration.

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The post For the explorers on your list: 4K night vision binoculars on sale for $70 off appeared first on Popular Science.

Every time I tried to learn to code on my own, I’d get overwhelmed because I didn’t really know where to start. Even basic tutorials felt like walls of jargon, and it’s not like I knew enough to know what to look for in a good guide, anyway. 

That’s why I’m so pumped that I found this bundle with Microsoft Visual Studio Pro and beginner coding courses. It’ll be on sale for $55.97 for a little while longer. 

The first part of this deal is a lifetime license for Microsoft Visual Studio Pro. If you’re learning languages like Python or C++, Visual Studio Pro is a solid platform to practice coding without getting bogged down by complicated setups. You can even debug and test apps across multiple environments, including Linux, making it easy to work on a variety of projects.

Visual Studio Pro is really great at adapting to your work style. There are even smart tools like IntelliCode to help you write code more quickly by suggesting the next part of your code based on what you’re working on. It’s like working with another programmer (who knows a lot more than me). And real-time collaboration means you actually can work with others. 

The courses don’t have a set progression path, so you can start wherever you want. I started with the course on Python 3 because a bunch of people on the internet said that’s the easiest language to learn. 

There are 78 lessons in that course alone, so they really go into detail about Python from the ground up. There were lessons on the basics of Python syntax to more complex concepts like object-oriented programming (OOP), working with databases, and creating real-world applications. 

The C++ for Absolute Beginners course is equally thorough. It walks you through the fundamentals of C++, starting with basics like variables, data types, and loops before moving on to memory management and object-oriented programming.

It’s not all theory. The course dedicated to building web apps showed me how to actually build real websites using a Flask framework, and that’s just a sampling of the curriculum. 

January 12 at 11:59 p.m. PT is the deadline to get Microsoft Visual Studio Pro and the Premium Learn to Code Bundle for $55.97 (reg. $1,999). 

StackSocial prices subject to change. 

Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2022 + The 2024 Premium Learn to Code Certification Bundle – $55.97

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The post Why this was the bundle that finally taught me to code appeared first on Popular Science.

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Making parking fully flexible could unlock more new homes than other land use reforms combined, according to new research out of Colorado that modeled how multiple policies would impact economic feasibility for new housing projects. 

The findings add to a growing body of evidence that making off-street parking optional is a small policy change that can lead to an abundance of new homes. Even though all the buildings modeled in the analysis voluntarily included parking, allowing homebuilders to create less parking made the biggest difference. In fact, building at lower home-to-parking-space ratios than what Colorado cities currently require could result in 40 to 70 percent more homes than are feasible to build today, the study found. 

“Requiring more parking than the market demands leads to inefficient outcomes,” researcher Ian Carlton explained. “Excess parking takes up space in buildings that could otherwise be housing, adds costs that are seldom offset by revenues, and can determine whether certain types of housing projects fit on sites of various sizes. [Real estate modeling group] MapCraft’s pro forma evaluations capture all three of these factors.” 

Compared to other zoning reforms such as legalizing ADUs or increasing building heights near transit, parking reform proved to be two to three times more effective at boosting housing supply. 

• Parking Reform
• Affordable Housing
• Transit Oriented Development

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