Some Mountain Towns are Eyeing Vancouver-style Vacancy Taxes. Could it Help Address Housing Crises?

The Western Hemisphere’s biggest city has developed a model blueprint for progressive housing policy in developing countries, in large part by affirming squatters' rights and demanding a certain percentage of low-income housing in new developments.

Threatened by increasingly rising sea levels caused by climate change, leaders in Miami Beach are spending equally increasing amounts of money on technology and systems to combat flooding.

A severe lack of affordable housing in Saudi Arabia has spurred the government to impose a tax on what has traditionally been a virtually tax-free society. However, they aim to tax only the wealthy owners of undeveloped land.

In Memphis, a creative blight-reduction initiative called 25 Square Blocks broke down the city into blocks. Inspectors were able to quickly identify all the violations and fix them, using the same amount of funding, but less time, as the old call-and-respond model.

As a state with robust populations of wildlife, Montana has had its share of roadkill. Its Department of Transportation developed animal shelving, a type of wildlife crossing, to enable safe passage for small animals who need to cross the road. The measure, combined with other types of crossings, has reduced animal-vehicle collisions by half.

New York City suffered from fires that erupted in overcrowded, run-down apartments. Then the city sleuthed through residential records and found that landlords who foreclosed let their properties fall apart and ignored safety-code violations. Greater Toronto wants to expand upon New York City’s method by using transportation surveys, census data and computer data to build transit lines.

Renovating and furnishing a home can be hugely expensive. Homeowners who are renovating on a budget, and want to do so in a way that is evironmentally friendly, can find recycled luxury kitchens and other lightly used fixtures at stores like Green Demolitions.

For a megacity with more than 18 million people in its metro area, Mumbai, India is not a particularly vertical city. Many of its inhabitants squeeze into low-rise slums crammed into the urban space. But an ongoing slum rehabilitation program seeks to clear these corrugated metal shacks and relocate the slum-dwellers to new high rises.

After a powerful storm destroyed their hospital and left lives at risk, Moore, Oklahoma is rebuilding a new type of facility that can weather a tornado. They are helping other cities learn how to do the same, ensuring that lives can still be saved in the face of such storms.

Michigan's roads have been in disrepair for years. Now with increased private sector funding and partnerships between companies and the government, the state could start to see improvements in its infrastructure.