Category: Housing
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Eminent domain, not always evil?
Eminent domain is one of those government powers that has gotten some bad press in recent years, mainly due it being used for economic development. But eminent domain doesn’t have to be all bad. Ellen Brown wrote a compelling piece on using ED as a tool to help reclaim foreclosed properties whose ownership is…
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The Other Brownsville
When I searched the New York Times website recently for “Brownsville” (the one in Brooklyn, not the one in Texas), the first few search results were as follows: 16-Year-Old Is Fatally Shot on His Way Home from a Party in Brownsville New York City’s Optimistic Tone Feels Out of Reach in Brownsville Brownsville, Brooklyn, Is…
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Mortgage Complaints
The 2008 mortgage crisis fascinated me at the time and then last year I bought a home. Therefore, I was pretty terrified during the whole process. Plus, I felt naked having to share my entire financial life to strangers. The NY Times had a recent article on “Complaints About Closings.” It is nice to…
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60 Mies van der Rohe Haus
This was my first visit to Berlin, and I was thinking about Bauhaus and Mies. Inevitably, the next morning I decided to visit Mies’s Lemke House at the outskirts of Berlin. I arrived there after a U-Bahn ride and a bus connection and was surprised how unassuming and humble that house looked from the street. But when you enter the…
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End of the Suburbs by Leigh Gallagher
PRESS Pass: Leigh Gallagher. A couple of interviews with Leigh Gallagher have recently been published (including the above video link) about her new book The End of the Suburbs. Her book looks at the history of the suburbs and the recent demographic shifts that have been occurring and what it means for the future…
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Guide to Vienna: Part 2 – Places to See In Vienna
Welcome to Vienna! My in-laws recently travelled to Vienna, Austria, and asked me to give them some advice and a few tips for their visit. My short list of points of interest quickly grew to several pages and included a brief, opinionated, somewhat political, description of Vienna in its Austrian context. Here is a slightly…