The Latest from CommunityScale
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Housing forecast
Housing Forecast is a housing planning tool for communities in the US: an out-of-the-box dashboard highlighting local housing trends and needs with interactive maps, charts, and guiding text.
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CommunityScale on Straight Talk radio to discuss Catawba Regional Workforce Housing Study
During a site visit including focus groups in each of the region’s four counties, the CommunityScale team stopped by Sub Station II in Rock Hill, SC, the longstanding sandwich shop in Rock Hill where…
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Less driving, more housing for Earth Day this year
Across America’s cities and towns, how dense the place is predictive of how much residents drive. Hover any city in the chart above to see its population, density, and modeled annual miles driven per…
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When using AI for planning analysis and policymaking, the results can mislead without reliable data.
In a recent Cities essay, Milad Malekzadeh makes the case that planners should engage with off-the-shelf AI as curators rather than coders: professionals who ask the right questions of these tools, validate outputs, and…
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Fair housing, housing supply, and affordability
April is Fair Housing Month, which commemorates The Fair Housing Act. Enacted on April 11, 1968, it prohibits discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, color, national origin, religion,…
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Diving into Portland, OR’s multifamily zoning incentives
Portland legalized fourplexes and made them financially superior to single-family houses through a sliding-scale FAR incentive in the zoning code. We break down the exact tables and provisions from Title 33 that produced 1,400…
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How zoning for data centers could actually benefit your community
Updated April 6, 2026 with US examples Data centers have been receiving pushback from communities (Joliet, IL, Lowell, MA). More than $64 billion in data center projects were delayed or canceled over concerns like…
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Regional Market Value Analysis for Greater Omaha-Council Bluffs
CommunityScale completed a Regional Market Value Analysis (MVA) for the Omaha-Council Bluffs metropolitan area in partnership with the Metropolitan Area Planning Agency (MAPA). Funded through a grant from Front Porch Investments, the MVA provides…
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Introducing the Housing Forecast app
Every community has a housing story. The challenge has always been that the data to tell it is scattered across half a dozen sources, each with its own geography, release schedule, and format. We…
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Will County, IL Housing Study
CommunityScale is leading a comprehensive Housing Study and Strategic Action Plan for the Will County Center for Economic Development (CED) in Illinois. The study provides a data-driven framework to promote housing that meets the…
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Mapping exposure to AI workforce disruption
Last week, Anthropic published “Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence,” a research paper that takes a novel approach to a question every community should be asking: which jobs are…
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Housing for the 21st Century Act & ROAD to Housing Act
Congress is advancing the most significant federal housing legislation in decades. Two major bills, the Housing for the 21st Century Act (H.R. 6644) and the ROAD to Housing Act (S. 2651), are moving through…
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Bayesian exploration of housing unit counts
Guest post: Avery Cutler explores US housing unit growth from 2020 to 2025 using Bayesian regression, identifying demographic and economic predictors of county-level change.
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Catawba, SC Regional Workforce Housing Study
CommunityScale is leading a Regional Workforce Housing Study for the Catawba Regional Council of Governments (CRCOG) in South Carolina. The study provides a data-driven framework for promoting housing that serves the workforce across Chester,…
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How filtering helps with affordability
We hear a version of the same question in nearly every community we work with: if new housing is so expensive, how can building more of it help people who can’t afford it? It’s…