Apartment City

The more than three dozen people who live in tents under the Lake Shore Drive bridges at Wilson and Lawrence avenues know better than anyone that the structures need repair. Concrete from the Depression-era bridges is crumbling onto the sidewalks and streets below, posing a deadly hazard to tent-dwellers, as well as motorists, bicyclists and pedestrians. So it may seem strange that a homeless advocacy group might sue the city to stop bridge repairs before they start in mid-September. But attorneys for the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless want to stop the city's plans to put bike paths on the wide sidewalks under the bridges, which the coalition said would permanently drive the homeless out. "If they put the bike paths in, we ain't going to have room for our tents," said Thomas Gordon, 58, who lives under the Lawrence bridge. The sidewalks can currently accommodate both tents and pedestrians — bike paths would cut the space. The dilemma highlights two local tren...

PALM BEACH GARDENS — Trying to catch up with massive construction and deal with future growth in Palm Beach Gardens , traffic engineers say they have a 20-year plan for Interstate 95 and a central-west intersection. Florida Department of Transportation officials explained it Thursday at Palm Beach Gardens City Hall . They talked about the upcoming projects at Central, Northlake and PGA Boulevards and at the intersection of the Beeline Highway and Northlake during the workshop. No construction will begin until 2021, they said. Palm Beach Gardens residents questioned a timeline that could have Northlake and Beeline and the Northlake and I-95 interchange under construction at the same time. Here’s a look at some of the key spots that will undergo changes: NORTHLAKE AND BEELINE FDOT quashed plans for a flyover at the intersection of Northlake and the Beeline Highway amid complaints from PGA National residents . Instead, engineers plan to build a new connector road through a triangular...

WASHINGTON (ABC7) — The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has released a painstakingly detailed progress report chocked -full of new facts pertaining to last summer's Silver Spring apartment explosion . The report, which does not identify a cause or assign blame, contains 108 documents, including transcribed witness interviews , vivid investigatory photographs and fire department call logs . One witness parked his car along Arliss Street on the night of August 10, 2016. He recollected seeing a sudden "white flash" and feeling a "shock wave" overcome his body. The sheer force of the blast shattered some of the man's car windows and even dented one of his car doors. “There was a flash, there was shock wave," the man, who suffered a minor cut near his right ear, told investigators. “I must tell you that the explosion came from the apartment on the first floor. There were two apartments on top of it that basically went down on it.” A second male...

The number of high-poverty neighborhoods in Colorado Springs rose from six to 22 between 2000 and 2015, a study conducted by the U.S. Census and published by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University has found. In the Springs, low-income neighborhoods used to occupy high- density urban areas , but, following a recent national trend , the study found that the city’s poor have increasingly dispersed into the city’s outer edges: fragmented neighborhoods with potentially limited access to public transportation or support programs. The study did not specify what outlying neighborhoods the growth has occurred in, but defined “high poverty” areas as those where 20 percent or more of the population lives below the federal poverty line . See image below . click to enlarge As more neighborhoods are becoming classified as high-poverty, individual families in Colorado Springs are experiencing noticeable financial struggles as well. According to a 2016 study by the Pew...

Bruce Chatterton moved to Meridian from Boise more than four years ago. The “room to grow” that is Meridian’s essence made him want to live and work there. Now the city’s community development director , Chatterton says it’s also been “fun seeing a small, somewhat quiet downtown become a place people want to hang out.” Meridian still has plenty of room to spread out, and that’s good, because its population is booming. It was the 13th-fastest-growing city in the U.S. last year. And it’s not just about Meridian. The growth is changing the whole Treasure Valley , affecting traffic, housing, health care, education and retail. The 2016 U.S. Census estimates put Meridian ’s population at nearly 96,000. The Community Planning Association of Southwest Idaho (Compass) estimates today ’s population at just more than 98,000. That’s a tenfold jump since 1990.   The growth seems unlikely to look to slow anytime soon, says Compass planner and demographics specialist Carl Miller , who lives in Meri...