A new report from the Brookings Institution shows that the D.C. metro area has the most “walkable places” per capita of any American city — one for every 264,000 people, beating out even New York City for walkability. Visiting Fellow Christopher B. Leinberger says that the Washington region could serve as the model for the direction the country’s other metro areas are heading over the next generation. The Associated Press already picked up on the…

Via Atrios, this little geographically motivated blog spat between Ben Adler at TAPPED and Brian Beutler, about whether New York or California has a better environmental record, misses the more important point: This study shows that it’s Washington, DC that actually has the lowest per capita gasoline consumption of any place in the country, by an impressively wide margin. We’ve certainly explored issues related to the relative greenness of densely populated urban environments, compared…

It was two years ago that we first took notice of D.C.’s new population of coyotes. Back then we worried about the threat of an international incident as the animals made their way to Embassy Row. Today the Post confirms that coyotes continue to roam the edges of Rock Creek Park, bringing them in much closer contact to city residents. This is one case of animal/human cohabitation that can’t be blamed on urban development pushing…

Yesterday, D.C. United announced that the Anschutz Entertainment Group had sold the team’s operating rights to an ownership group led by Victor MacFarlane, a real estate and urban development executive. While rumored for several months, the sale came as a surprise, given the details of the deal that emerged yesterday. MacFarlane, who heads the largest minority-owned real estate group in the country, will be joined by Will Chang, the chairman of a global investment…

Last Sunday, Michael Grunwald took to the pages of the Post to discuss, and malign, the District’s building height restrictions. His piece is an interesting read, but Grunwald’s analysis of how the restriction has affected the city is fairly spotty, as Mark Jenkins notes in a City Desk post from yesterday. For one thing, it’s difficult to say that height restrictions have created a space crunch in the city, when for so long so much…

Yesterday D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams laid bare his opinion on what type of parking facility he’d like to see around the new stadium in Southeast: “I strongly believe that it’s in the best long-term interest of the District to put these parking spaces underground, not above-ground as is frequently done in the suburbs,” said Mayor Williams. “It will serve the ballpark as well as the surrounding community for us to place this parking garage below…

In a city where property values have risen more than 14 percent over the last year, various District officials and activists have expressed concern over the availability of affordable housing. The D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute noted in a recent report that the shortage of affordable housing widened from 1990 to 2003 due to a 90 percent cut in funding for affordable housing over the same years, thus leading to an increase of the percentage of…

In a redeveloping city, where space is scarce and small squabbles over any piece of property has the potential to turn into a large heated community debate, the city’s lack of available national monumental space could dominate the District’s urban development discourse for much of the 21st century. On Monday, Post columnist Fred Hiatt, making the case for a “third-century Mall,” gives us some historical perspective. As the nation has grown, so has the National…

We know that the drama of baseball stadium financing is so 2004, but don’t forget there are a few loose ends to tie up on the stadium deal. Particularly among them is D.C. Council Chairman Linda Cropp’s desire to attract private financing to build the new South Capitol Street stadium in order to lessen the burden on the District. The city has been receiving and is now reviewing a number of proposals from private interests….

In the Post’s Real Estate section this weekend, University of Maryland architecture professor Roger Lewis writes about the opening of the New York Avenue-Florida Avenue-Gallaudet University metrorail station on the Red Line in a greater development perspective. With federal offices moving in, the station has the potential to launch a new wave of development that will transform the area near the intersection of New York and Florida avenues in Northeast, seen here in an map…