Yes

This looks promising!

PS - I hope this network will actively work to address the widespread problem of published research studies that fail to replicate.

Love the acronym, and glad to see this coming to life!

BUILD Research Network - Better Urbanism, Infrastructure, and Land-use Decisions The BUILD (Better Urbanism, Infrastructure, and Land-use Decisions) Research Network connects researchers, policymakers, and funders working to improve housing, energy, and transportation systems.

More information is available and will be forthcoming on the BUILD website (still a work in progress) ⤵️.

/end

Many thanks to Leah Brooks, @nbagley.bsky.social, @dbroockman.bsky.social, & Alexandra Klass, w/ whom I've been working to launch BUILD; to the amazing teams at
@ssrc.org & @arnoldventures.bsky.social; to inaugural program director Susan Minushkin; and to many others too numerous to name! ❤️ 🏗️

/8

Join the Network BUILD is open to researchers working on housing, energy, and transportation policy.

And more!

If you're interested and want to stay in the loop, fill out this form on the SSRC website, build.ssrc.org/join-the-net....

(There's no obligation, just information & opportunity, for researchers, policymakers, and journalists.)

/7

4⃣ Serve as an information clearinghouse for researchers about funding opportunities.

5⃣ Offer peer reviews for funders looking to support research on housing, energy or transportation.

/6

3⃣ Grow the next generation of researchers working on housing, energy, and transportation, via curriculum development, mentoring, and professional development.

/5

2⃣ Support the production of public goods like datasets & open-access tools that enable new / better policy-minded research, and of policy briefs and other "research translation" that makes the research more impactful.

/4

BUILD will:

1⃣ Connect researchers across disciplines and to policymakers, helping researchers learn about policymakers' needs & priorities, and policymakers to understand what researchers have discovered.

/3

We aim to improve the quality of public decisionmaking about housing, energy & transportation by supporting policy-relevant research and facilitating its uptake by public officials.

(We see these topics as inherently linked by the need to build stuff & coordinate land uses.)

/2

BUILD Research Network - Better Urbanism, Infrastructure, and Land-use Decisions The BUILD (Better Urbanism, Infrastructure, and Land-use Decisions) Research Network connects researchers, policymakers, and funders working to improve housing, energy, and transportation systems.

Are you a researcher or policymaker working on housing, energy, or transportation issues?

Welcome to the BUILD Research Network! A project of
@ssrc.org w/ support from @arnoldventures.bsky.social, BUILD is a new platform for strengthening the research-to-policy pipeline.

build.ssrc.org

🧵/9

I've been meaning to ask you about it!

The Type V City How building codes shaped material, social, and environmental landscapes in American cities. Almost every American city contains neighborhoods dominated by w...

A tenured prof of architecture at U. Va. is writing about building codes, utpress.utexas.edu/9781477331620/.

Engineering school? Public policy?

Funding inclusionary zoning is good progressive policy!

“I believe in inclusionary zoning as a mechanism to economically integrate neighborhoods, not as a tax on all new housing.” - @senkhanhpham.bsky.social (D-Portland), OR Sen. Hous. Comm.

2/2

Oregon’s New Path to Inclusionary Housing: Fully Funded and Flexible | Sightline Institute An environmental justice champion led the push to end counterproductive, unfunded mandates.

Progressives in the Pacific Northwest are lapping their CA sibs in the race for good housing policy.

The latest: An Oregon ban on unfunded inclusionary zoning, with Democratic Socialists leading the charge.

Read @andersem.bsky.social's story, www.sightline.org/2026/03/05/o...

1/2

Is the brand new city in California for real? Jan Sramek joins me to discuss the controversy, funding, and master plan behind the massive California Forever project.

Want to learn about @caforever.bsky.social while doing the dishes? @volts.wtf breaks it down, with a new doubleheader podcast. Highly recommended!

www.volts.wtf/p/is-the-bra...

www.volts.wtf/p/how-to-des...

What is "Builder's Remedy"? YouTube video by Everybody Gets Pie

"Builder's remedy" is a little-known mechanism where, if a city isn't complying with state housing laws, builders don't have to comply with the city's zoning. Then @cselmendorf.bsky.social made a viral 2019 thread about it that sparked a California building revolution.

What Makes People ACTUALLY Change Their Minds About Housing (real experiment) YouTube video by Justine Underhill

Which arguments ACTUALLY change people’s minds about housing?
Last year I worked with researchers testing different messages, and the results were... surprising!
New video on it: youtube.com/watch?v=aCKr...
Enjoyed working with @cselmendorf.bsky.social @jkalla.bsky.social @dbroockman.bsky.social

Research + Policy Symposium: Evidence to Inform Infrastructure and Housing Development | Opportunity Lab On April 15th, the Opportunity Lab will host a day of presentations and discussions for researchers, graduate students, policymakers, and practitioners to examine how governments can more effectively ...

Excited to be speaking next month at this @berkeleyolab.bsky.social event. Check out the fantastic lineup and register here: www.olab.berkeley.edu/olab-events/...

Housing Case Studies 2026 Summer Research Opportunity The Social Science Research Council (SSRC), as part of the Better Urbanism, Infrastructure, and Land-Use Decisions (BUILD) Research Network program, seeks proposals from researchers to recruit and sup...

Profs & students: Want to write a case study of state housing legislation this summer?

Apply for funding from @ssrc.org & @arnoldventures.bsky.social. Application deadline is March 30.

www.ssrc.org/programs/bui...

"Blacklisted by the investment community" -- meaning they operate as a cartel?

California housing legislation idea:
For the purpose of ensuring compliance with PSA deadlines, require municipalities to post on their websites
A) date of application submission for housing project and deadline for determination of completeness (30 days after submission)

Locations of new homes built in Switzerland in 2018

Country-wide effects of new housing supply: Evidence from moving chains, by Lukas Hauck and Frederic Kluser

Another new paper on housebuilding and vacancy chains, this time with data on every Swiss resident & housing unit! An interesting context given Switzerland's high immigration, very large rented sector and strong tenancy rent controls... frederickluser.github.io/files/Moving...

Read this in draft—it’s great!

Abstract for Transportation for the Abundant Society: A growing chorus known as the abundance movement seeks to overcome artificial scarcity in the built environment—especially housing. Yet this movement’s signature goal of increasing housing production collides with a central driver of scarcity: development restrictions rooted in traffic concerns. Advocates often assume that building more housing will generate support for needed transportation reform. Experience suggests otherwise. In auto-dependent regions, adding housing without reconfiguring transportation tends to reinforce the logic of restriction. Unlocking abundance’s promised feedback loops requires re-grounding transportation policy in its relationship to land use. This Article makes two contributions. First, it introduces into legal analysis a core urban-planning framework: transportation accessibility, which evaluates system performance by users’ ability to reach destinations. Though facially modest, anchoring policy in accessibility would depart sharply from a century of practice, with significant implications across state and local government law. Second, drawing on 13 original interviews with current and former transportation officials, the Article develops a novel account of institutional barriers to reform. Far from the marble corridors and mahogany courtrooms where law is articulated, transportation policy is functionally made in the unglamorous offices of state and local government. We call this institutional crucible—shaped by agency culture and industry convention as well as hard law—“transportation policy linoleum.” It helps explain why proven, seemingly unobjectionable reforms routinely wither. The Article closes with a policy playbook designed to help accessibility break through the linoleum and deliver abundance.

Table of Contents CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 3 I. ABUNDANCE AND TRANSPORTATION POLICY 6 A. The Rise of Abundance 7 B. Transportation as a Binding Constraint 10 II. THE PURPOSE OF TRANSPORTATION POLICY 17 A. What Counts as Success? 18 B. From Mobility to Access 20 C. Transportation Policy Spillovers 24 1. Housing affordability 24 2. Climate mitigation 28 3. Roadway safety 29 III. OPERATIONAL BARRIERS TO REFORM 32 A. Network Effects and System Interdependence 33 B. Operational Complexity and Risk 34 IV. LEGAL BARRIERS TO REFORM 36 A. NEPA and the Dawn of Conservation Primacy 36 B. Judges as Planners: California’s CEQA Regime 40 C. Judges as Planners Around the Country 44 1. Minnesota and comprehensive planning 44 2. Washington, D.C. and density review 46 3. Montana and constitutional penumbra 46 V. TRANSPORTATION POLICY LINOLEUM 48 A. Policy “In Books” and “In Action”: 13 Interviews 48 B. Fragmentation and Coordination Failures 49 C. Path Dependence and Institutional Lock-In 53 D. Legal Risk and Defensive Administration 55 VI. A POLICY PLAYBOOK FOR ACCESS 57 A. Behavioral Data as Participation 57 1. Ex ante participation 58 2. Ex post participation 59 B. Realistic Alternatives Modeling 59 C. A More Honest Cost-Benefit Analysis 60 1. Requiring cost-benefit discipline 61 2. Accounting for opportunity costs and externalities 63 CONCLUSION 64

ToC continued, plus first bit of text from article: A central claim of the emerging “abundance agenda” is that in the physical world, more is more: more housing, more clean energy, and more infrastructure to support both. Abundance brings the American promise of plenty into policy, arguing that government should expand capacity—so that individuals can access the good life and society can advance climate goals, scientific discovery, and prosperity. In both its academic and popular expressions, the ideologically diverse movement contends that law has created artificial scarcity and that the remedy is to loosen outdated constraints and rebuild state capacity so government can build and approve major projects—housing, transportation, energy, health—more quickly and reliably. Abundance draws on a substantial literature diagnosing law-made supply constraints in American public policy. Its core question is pragmatic: how to clear regulatory blockages to enable more building. Scholars have long identified such blockages at the intersection of land use and transportation, from highways to high-speed rail. Yet even improved megaprojects would not meet most Americans’ daily transportation needs. And the connection between transportation policy and abundance remains underdeveloped, even as political interest grows.

✨ introducing… ✨

🌇 Transportation for the Abundant Society 🚅

"Abundance" says our problem is artificial scarcity—especially housing. But you can’t build your way out if transportation policy still treats traffic flow as sacred.

Transportation is the binding constraint. ssrn.com/abstract=538...

California Forever Building the next great American city

You've probably heard that a group of CA tech guys wants to build a brand new port city in northern CA. The project is called "California Forever" & it's apparently breaking ground this year. Lots of folks are skeptical!

On Wed., I'm going to talk with Jan Sramek, the founder/CEO.

Got questions?

Read @mbolotnikova.bsky.social excellent new story on housing aesthetics and housing politics, covering my work w/ @dbroockman.bsky.social & @jkalla.bsky.social, the advocacy of @urbancourtyard.bsky.social, and more!

Gift link: www.vox.com/future-perfe...