Curbed October 2018 Amid the havoc Hurricane Michael caused on blocks of waterfront property in Mexico Beach, Florida, a single home stood out after the storm cleared, a survivor of winds that made buildings “buck like an airplane wing.” This so-called Sand Palace, a home owned by Russell King and his nephew, Dr. Lebron Lackey, and profiled in […]
Curbed November 2018 For Seattleites sick of seeing their livable, laid-back city transformed by the tech industry, the chorus of complaints is growing. Newly minted millionaires are building luxury homes around the expensive corners of Puget Sound. Traffic is becoming a nightmare. And a predicted population boom will create a severe shortage of affordable housing. […]
Curbed November 2018 Amazon’s much-hyped expansion—the company will place 25,000 new jobs each in New York City and Arlington, Virginia—highlights how insular the tech industry can be when it comes to real estate. Tech companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Boston, and New York City have taken up more than 25 million […]
Curbed November 2018 Calling the Minneapolis 2040 plan ambitious is an understatement. The plan, which is expected to pass City Council scrutiny early next month, is the furthest-reaching such proposal from a U.S. municipality, and comes after nearly a year of heated debate. The updated policy would upzone nearly the entire city, which will allow taller buildings with more […]
Curbed December 2018 A wave of sameness has washed over new residential architecture. U.S. cities are filled with apartment buildings sporting boxy designs and somewhat bland facades, often made with colored panels and flat windows. Due to an Amazon-fueled apartment construction boom over the last decade, Seattle has been an epicenter of this new school of structural […]
Curbed January 2019 When Cameron Crow, 29, contemplated a move back to his native Boise, Idaho, three years ago, his friends reacted with confusion. At the time, Crow was a data analyst working in San Francisco, the nation’s tech hub; why would he leave that for a small city in Idaho? Crow said it took […]
Curbed February 2019 Chicago’s many nicknames, from the City of Big Shoulders to the City That Works, riff on its reputation as a gritty, hard-working, and down-to-earth alternative to coastal cities. But the nickname that best characterizes life in Chicago may be the City of Neighborhoods, which reflects its array of diverse, distinct, and close-knit […]
Curbed March 2019 Along with dog parks and third-wave coffee shops, the high-end, over-amenitized apartment has become a contemporary urban cliche. Luxury apartments aren’t new. But today’s developers have elevated to an art form the practice of including amenities that pander to millennial lifestyle trends. In Seattle, where the Amazon-fueled boom in luxury high-rises added so much inventory that rents at […]
Curbed May 2019 Like many born and raised in Bakersfield, California, Austin Smith has made peace with the city’s reputation. Built on oil and agriculture, the city of half a million in the state’s rural Central Valley, known by outsiders for its unique strain of country music and long-running role as a punchline for Johnny Carson, has traditionally […]
Curbed May 2019 When country music megastars George Strait and Alan Jackson performed “Murder on Music Row” live during the 1999 Country Music Association Awards show, the two singers used the song’s blunt lyrics to critique the radio-friendly sheen of contemporary country and its threat to traditional songwriting and artistry. Anyone familiar with the country […]