Urban Law

My Secured Transactions students are often surprised to learn that a taxi medallion can serve as collateral for a secured loan. But taxi medallion lending is a big business: at the end of the 20th century, fewer than 30% of cabdrivers in New York City owned their medallions outright; most owned them subject to a loan secured by the value of the medallion. For years, New York encouraged investment in medallions, as they were thought to be an incredibly safe investment due to

As an academic, one reads a fair amount of texts. Very few of them give you sheer pleasure throughout the process of reading, while at the same time causing you to rethink and reimagine themes and concepts that you have been otherwise engaged with for years. Co-Cities by Sheila Foster and Christian Iaione is one of these rare gems. Sheila and Christian, two dear friends and colleagues, brilliant scholars, and truly engaged citizens of cities and the world, have written an in

Co-Cities by Sheila Foster and Christian Iaione is a tour de force. They provide a rigorous empirical analysis of more than 200 global cities, and over 500 case studies within those metropolises, to reconceptualize “the city” for the contemporary age. (p. 24) While many scholars theorize or hypothesize “the city,” Foster and Iaione use surveys, qualitative interviews, detailed case studies, fieldwork, and geo mapping to derive a new and informed urban governance theory. Co-C

Philadelphia police cancel 200 block parties for ‘criminal activity,’ frustrating residents - On top of Philly news (billypenn.com) Indiana officers suspended for arrest of possible candidate they thought was anti-cop - The Washington Post Op-Ed: Solve the insulin pricing problem by getting government into the business - Los Angeles Times (latimes.com) How New York City Hopes to Win Its Long, Losing War on Trash - The New York Times (nytimes.com) Judge Says He Will Toss O

How Texas forces companies to stay neutral on gun control - or lose business (dallasnews.com) California Judicial Council Sued for Illegal Scheme to Fund Courts through Late Fees; San Mateo Court Stops Collecting Millions in Outstanding Debts and Waits for Governor and Legislature to Act. - LCCRSF Oklahoma becomes first state to ban almost all abortion access (19thnews.org) The Cityhood Movement Is Defeated in Metro Atlanta - Bloomberg Opinion | A local official sued me f

Preserving History in a Town that Doesn’t Want to Remember San Francisco’s public nuisance suit against pharma for opioids will go forward Biden is Doubling Down on a Push to Roll Back Single-Family Zoning Laws The Jeffrey Toobin of Local Government A Lake in Florida is Suing to Protect Itself NYC’s Big Clean-Energy Project Poses A Major Climate Test For The Country

Cities Move to Sever ‘Sister City’ Ties with Russian Governments When a Tech Company Tries to Be a Good Neighbor In Face of National Apathy, Local Groups Lead Rural Democratic Efforts The Red State Murder Problem Trash City: Here is Why NYC is So Filthy Public Meetings Thwart Housing Reform Where It Is Needed Most

This is the last in a four part series. SLoGLaw thanks Chris Elmendorf and Tim Duncheon for this timely treatment of the important issue of affordable housing for California, and urban regions around the country--Ed. The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requires state and local agencies that have discretion to choose among possible options to study environmental effects before making their choice. In theory, this leads to better agency decisions. (A contestable cla

Here is Part 3 or this four-part series: The HAA prevents cities from denying or reducing the density of housing projects, but it doesn’t exempt projects from environmental review under CEQA. CEQA spells out time limits for the completion of environmental reviews, but as yesterday’s post explained, those limits have proven illusory in court. So if a city wants to deny a project that the HAA protects, what’s to keep the city from laundering the denial, as it were, through CEQ

In yesterday’s post , we asserted that the recent denial of a downtown housing project in San Francisco portends a generational clash of super-statutes, with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) facing off against the state’s Housing Accountability Act (HAA). In subsequent posts, we will explore the particulars of the CEQA-HAA conflict, as illustrated by the saga of the San Francisco project. Today, however, our goal is simply to show that CEQA and the HAA both hav

Late last month, observers erupted in fury when San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors voted down a proposal to build nearly 500 new homes -- many affordable -- on a downtown site now being used for valet parking. The Board’s vote came short on the heels of a major Court of Appeal decision upholding the state’s Housing Accountability Act (HAA), which the Legislature has greatly strengthened in recent years. The HAA usually requires cities to approve housing projects that a r

Ithaca, New York made headlines recently with its announcement that it would fully decarbonize its buildings . The city’s Energy Efficiency Retrofitting and Thermal Load Electrification Program is part of the Ithaca Green New Deal, which has a goal of carbon neutrality for Ithaca by 2030 . In the past several years, a number of other local governments have taken steps toward decarbonizing the building stock by either banning natural gas hookups in new homes , or by amending

I thank the editors of SLoG Law Blog and of course my interlocutors for their spirited engagement with the arguments put forth in my recent book, City, State As I said in accepting the Stein Rokkan Prize for comparative social science research, writing a book of this scope on a vitally important yet understudied topic at the intersection of public law and comparative politics, requires tremendous devotion and research. It is therefore exceptionally gratifying to see it gene

I could not be more excited about helping to bring this blog to life with this amazing group of scholars. For those of us who are...