August 31: Place, race, rules | Parking, urban success | Philly sues Sessions

The conversation about parking and urban success has largely focused on commercial cores and not residential areas, so does the same urbanist thinking apply to neighborhoods? Inga Saffron looks at Center City’s falling garage occupancy, the cost of on-street parking in Philadelphia, and what “fuels resident demands for developers to increase the number of parking spaces in their projects.”

Place-based rabble rousers and race-based provocateurs need to recognize that they are fighting the same fight, argues Brett Mandel in an op-ed for the Philadelphia Citizen. Highlighting Black Lives Matter’s “impolite but important disruptions” demanding acknowledgement of David Jones, a black man fatally shot by a Philadelphia police officer, and 5th Square’s “impolitic but imperative actions” in the political action committee’s charge against median parking on South Broad, Mandel urges both groups to mobilize behind a single platform to “create a city with one set of rules.”

Philadelphia is suing Attorney General Jeff Sessions over “unlawful” grant conditions that punish it as a “sanctuary city,” WHYY’s Bobby Allyn reports. City lawyers contend that the conditions are an example of executive overreach, arguing that Congress sets the terms of federal spending, not the Justice Department. Philly joins Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago in taking Sessions to court to keep the grant funds without restrictions.

“March in Black” organizer Dan Martino discusses the opioid epidemic in Kensington with WHYY’s Dave Heller on NewsWorks Tonight. In observance of International Overdose Awareness Day Thursday, representatives from Police and Fire, government officials, first responders, community groups, and victims will be speaking at the march. Martino strongly advocates for supervised injection facilities, speaking to opponents’ concerns of ‘normalizing’ heroin use as the NIMBY solution to public injection. The march starts at the York-Dauphin stop, up Kensington to the Somerset stop, and concludes at McPherson Square.

On the promising trends and complexities of local economies: the National League of Cities’ latest report, Local Economic Conditions: The Untold Story of the Varied Middle, examines how changes in local economic conditions gave rise to five distinct economy types. Looking at the performance of key local economic indicators since 2016, NLC defined economies as “Rural Brain Drain,” “Major Job Centers,” and—for the mid-sized economies—“Room to Grow,” “Mid-sized Business Boomers,” and “Cities on Par.”

WHYY is your source for fact-based, in-depth journalism and information. As a nonprofit organization, we rely on financial support from readers like you. Please give today.

Want a digest of WHYY’s programs, events & stories? Sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Together we can reach 100% of WHYY’s fiscal year goal