Newsroom

Dec 9, 2010

Maintaining a sense of community in light of new investment and lots of new residents can be tricky. In most instances where a neighborhood is severely blighted by high crime poor education appalling housing and inadequate access to health care it can be argued that a functioning community does not exist. In such cases it’s easy to see how investment aimed at improving these indicators will be beneficial for the neighborhood’s current residents as long adequate safeguards are put in place to

Dec 8, 2010

It’s no secret that metro Washington is full of college degrees. In fact it has one of the highest concentrations of college and advanced degrees in the country. Over at Urbanophile there’s a really interesting post complete with graphs and charts comparing the cities and counties with the highest “density of degrees” as well as the growth in the density of degrees relative to population growth in general.

Dec 7, 2010

Metropolitan Washington – made up of the District of Columbia Northern Virginia and Suburban Maryland – has about 5.3 million people. It’s one of the fastest growing metro areas in the country that’s not in Texas California or the southeast and its continued growth represents a national and international trend: the rise of global cities .

Dec 6, 2010

Unless you’ve been under a rock for the past year or so you know there’s been a lot of talk recently on the deficit. It’s everywhere. And everyone seems to have an idea for how to reduce it. So what does this have to do with RF? Well the panel of experts commissioned by President Obama to look at ways to cut the deficit released its report last week. It contains some of the typically-cited measures – raising the retirement age cuts to social spending tax increases etc. – as well as some not​

Dec 3, 2010

Much of the attention regarding Europe at the moment is undoubtedly focused on the crisis facing some euro-zone countries. However much more positive news is emerging from the continent on the environmental and climate front. As reported at Switchboard European nations have taken the lead at climate talks in Cancun Mexico by making good on their promises to help developing countries reduce their emissions and adapt to some inevitable climate change as laid out in last year’s Copenhagen acco​

Dec 1, 2010

Planners economic development officials policy makers and general enthusiasts have an obsession with lists and rankings of metro areas. That’s the charge from Vincent Valk of Next American City . In “List-o-mania” Valk argues that this obsession is largely insignificant at the megacity level. Whether Los Angeles or Washington is ranked as the country’s most congested area is not likely to be enough of a factor in changing someone’s mind to move to a particular region.

Nov 30, 2010

A couple of interesting articles have popped up recently both centered on the idea that the size of a city is important to its success and the nature of its economy. The first titled “The Rise of the Efficient City” is written by suburban-enthusiast Joel Kotkin who argues that mid-sized cities like Austin and Raleigh are better positioned to thrive in the 21 st century than are megacities like New York or Chicago. Kotkin argues that the U.S. and the world are embracing mid-sized cities eve​

Nov 29, 2010

Building a more inclusive region is one of the primary goals of RF. We’ve blogged on multiple occasions about the need to reduce disparities in the region particularly in education to meet RF targets and to help more of the region’s residents share in metro Washington’s relative prosperity. ​

Nov 24, 2010

Scrambling to put together some last minute Thanksgiving travel plans? Planning ahead for the winter holidays? Consider taking the train. Matt Yglesias from Think Progress blogged recently about the environmental benefits of traveling by train which this graphic from the U.S. DOT demonstrates:

Nov 23, 2010

An interesting piece today over at Next American City discusses how the proliferation of “hyperlocal” blogs and web sites is impacting urban planning. Highlighting a number of sites focused on the metro Washington region the piece argues that urban planning a field sometimes perceived as unapproachable by the general public (either by design or by the wonkish nature of the discipline) is becoming more connected to the people it affects – a positive development.