Happy Memorial Day!
This week's post was supposed to be a followup to my post outlining rebuttals to the most common complaints I hear about Expanding Housing Choices (and NIMBYism in general), titled Why I DON'T hate NIMBYs. I will express my empathy for NIMBYs in the next post, because I thought the following post was much more timely.
In urban news, we have been hearing a lot about the specific phase of the pandemic that the United States is in. We are at an inflection point where the country is slowly starting to reopen. Many small businesses and especially restaurants across the country have been hit hard. Durham is no exception.
The federal government has issued PPP loans and other relief, but cities must maintain a balanced budget. So what can cities do? One thing they can do is relax regulations and allow businesses to figure out their own solutions.
Many cities are closing down streets to cars so that pedestrians can have room to walk without getting too close to fellow r…