October 23: Just Spaces | Pro-growth, equity planning | Furnessian flair

UCD is developing an audit tool to “assess the accessibility and equity of its public space network,” Generocity’s Julie Zeglen reports. UCD’s Alissa Weiss says that Just Spaces will take into consideration proximity, access to programming, race, gender, class, and ability. The advisory board that UCD brought together includes Little Giant Creative co-founder Tayyib Smith, Penn’s Social Policy and Practice’s Amy Hillier, and Malcolm Burnley, who covers civic assets and the Rebuild initiative for PlanPhilly. 

Now that Philly has submitted its bid for HQ2 and we can all exhale, it’s time to look at how the city could use its centralized planning power to take a pro-growth approach to equity planning, writes the University of Pennsylvania’s Ken Steif. Contributing to NextCity, Steif writes that cities can use data to predict and plan for neighborhood demand, based in part by a neighborhood’s distance from a gentrified neighborhood, tracking housing demands in Callowhill and Mantua as examples.

Local business news: how does Reading Terminal, at 125 years, plan to compete with young guns MOM’s Organic, Whole Foods, and Amazon? General Manager Anuj Gupta shares the market’s innovations on the horizon, including an incubator for farm-to-table entrepreneurs, distillery kiosks, and a new app, the Inquirer’s Sam Wood reports. Gupta says the market will continue to focus on supporting family-owned businesses with help from corporate sponsorships to subsidize the mom-and-pop shops.

Did you know that architect Willis G. Hale, known for his “High Victorian masterworks” including the Divine Lorraine and the Keystone National Bank Building, also designed at least four industrial buildings? Why yes, it’s true. GroJLart, contributing to Hidden City Philadelphia, looks at the many lives of the heavily decorated John Hopkins Warehouse before it met its untimely demise to make way for Interstate 95.

Former DA Seth Williams faces sentencing Tuesday, WHYY’s Dave Davies reports. In the pre-sentencing memo, defense attorney Tom Burke asked U.S. District Judge Paul Diamond to “consider Williams’ efforts to improve the DA’s office, and the penalties he’s already suffered, including the loss of his city pension and law license.” Burke also asked that Williams be allowed to see his mother “in the event she passes while he is incarcerated.”