Good morning. The Canadian authorities identified the suspect in Tuesday’s mass shooting in British Columbia but have yet to determine a motive. And The Times learned what triggered a brief shutdown of the airspace over El Paso. We’ll get to more news below. But first, let’s hear from Conor Dougherty, who covers housing for The Times. His latest story explores the possibility of relieving the housing crisis by … building cities from scratch.
Neotownby Conor Dougherty Amid the sprawl of Orange County, Calif., is something unusual: A 300,000-person city with a dense base of employment, a university, manufacturing and high-rise office buildings. Irvine, which until the 1960s was a panorama of grain and citrus farms, came together quickly and not organically: A single business, the Irvine Company, planned most of its parks, streets and structures. It still owns most apartments, shopping centers and offices — even a local newspaper. Almost no place in America is more completely a company town. As the country grapples with a housing shortage — economists say there are four to seven million too few homes — Irvine’s model has gained a new appeal. What more efficient way to produce homes than by building on vacant land without the complexities of an existing city? Enticed by the potential profits and eager to have more control over their footprint, investors and businesses are backing new town and neighborhood concepts that, like Irvine, are guided by a private hand.
Start-up citiesOpen land represents the future in its purest form — after all, every place was no place at some point. Some of the new plans are dead serious, others fanciful. Perhaps not surprisingly, their most enthusiastic proponents tend to be technology billionaires.
Despite its planning successes, Irvine remains every bit as car-centric as the bedroom communities around it. The goal of many of today’s start-up cities and neighborhoods is to upend the suburban form and reduce car use by creating walkable small towns. Hard to pull offIrvine was part of a new town movement of the 1960s and ’70s, which included the cities of Reston, Va., and Columbia, Md., both outside Washington, as well as the Woodlands, Texas, near Houston. Demand for housing exploded as baby boomers began to buy homes. Cookie-cutter subdivisions sprouted to meet the demand, but they were so uniform and ugly that developers began seeking alternatives. The Irvine Company jump-started its town by donating 1,000 acres for a new University of California campus and building housing for the school, which attracted more businesses, more employees, more housing and so on. Today, its neighborhoods are layered with single-family houses and multiunit buildings. But while Irvine thrived, the movement it was a part of did not. Since 1960, there have been several dozen attempts to create new town communities, most of which have failed to attract more than a few thousand residents. Every development is risky. A whole city is extraordinarily so. A developer must first build a water supply, power lines, sewer pipes and other infrastructure — a project that takes many years and consumes potentially billions of losses before the first home is built. The more daunting hurdle is attracting enough jobs to create an economic base, since people want to live within a reasonable distance of their work. That’s why America’s most successful new cities in the postwar era are on the edge of bustling places where outward growth was already underway, one scholar told me. There is no Reston without Washington, no Irvine without Los Angeles. As America looks to solve its housing shortage, new cities are likely to be part of the solution. But you probably won’t have to drive far to find them. Read about how these cities are approaching cars in my new story. For more: In the video below, Matthew Goldstein, a business reporter, explains why an executive order from President Trump to curtail Wall Street’s power in the housing market may not be effective. Click to play.
Late Tuesday night, the F.A.A. shut down the airspace around El Paso for 10 days, citing “special security reasons” — without explaining what that meant. The move surprised airlines, travelers and even others in the federal government. By yesterday morning, though, the restrictions were gone. And The Times learned the reason for the shutdown: Customs and Border Protection had fired a high-energy anti-drone laser, on loan from the Pentagon, without giving aviation officials time to assess the risks to commercial airlines. The target of the laser? According to people familiar with the matter, it was a party balloon that the military thought was a cartel drone.
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The Trump administration’s lawlessness undermines social order by making citizens distrust their government, the Times editorial board writes. Every institution that claims to protect us seems to be failing. Learning self-defense is more important than ever, Rana Abdelhamid writes. Morning readers: Save on the complete Times experience. Experience all of The Times, all in one subscription — all with this introductory offer. You’ll gain unlimited access to news and analysis, plus games, recipes, product reviews and more.
Animal explorers: Seals tagged with electronic sensors are collecting data about the changing climate in Antarctica. Changing tastes: Malaysian durian farmers made a lot of money over the last decade as China snapped up their produce. Then preferences shifted and the market collapsed. Your pick: The most-clicked link in The Morning yesterday was a video about what happens after immigration agents shoot someone.
2,400— That is the approximate population of Tumbler Ridge, the remote community in British Columbia where a mass shooting on Tuesday left nine people, including the suspected shooter, dead. “I will know every victim,” the mayor said.
Skeleton: Vladyslav Heraskevych of Ukraine was disqualified for planning to wear a helmet commemorating countrymen killed in the war with Russia. Speedskating: Jordan Stolz of Team U.S.A. set an Olympic record in the men’s 1,000-meter race, coming from behind to win his first gold in one minute, 6.28 seconds. Figure skating: The American ice-dance duo Madison Chock and Evan Bates, the favorite to win gold, was upset by Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron of France and took silver. Women’s moguls: Liz Lemley and Jaelin Kauf turned in the best Olympic performance ever for the U.S. in the women’s freestyle skiing moguls. Lemley won the gold medal, and Kauf captured the silver.
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