NIMBY wrap-up for the week of Tuesday, July 30th

Here's the NIMBY wrap-up for the week of Tuesday, July 30th.

The big news this week: HUD issues a proposed rule (FR–5173–P–01) on Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing. Here is the proposed rule, and here is a good summary in Atlantic Cities. The new rule 1) refines what "affirmatively further fair housing" really means, and 2) outlines how HUD will help grantees affirmatively further fair housing by publishing extensive local data on patterns of integration and segregation. As Shaun Donovan put it in a speech to the NAACP earlier this month: "Make no mistake: this is a big deal."

From the AP: The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the Dallas suburb of Farmers Branch can't enforce a law that bans immigrants in the United States without legal permission from renting apartments. The ordinance is one of many LOCAL IMMIGRATION ORDINANCES we discuss in our forthcoming book.

Here's a poignant piece from Bloomberg's James S. Russell about the fortress-ification of downtown Manhattan.

There have been so many excellent pieces about Trayvon Martin that it's hard to know what to post. Here is an important perspective from an educator on "Race, Space, and Trayvon Martin," from the Society of Architectural Historians.

Stuck in Place by Patrick Sharkey is very high up on our reading list. Here is a good interview Sharkey did with Richard Florida in Atlantic Cities.

From Bettery: some good, creative thinking about how to make cities less lonely for the elderly, a topic that figures fairly prominently in our forthcoming book.

On a lighter note, there's an interesting debate raging in lower Manhattan about ferry horns that pits kayakers against residents of battery Park City. Be sure to check out the comments.