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Greg12 posted:wishing for regional government is just as absurd as wishing for a federal government that spends money on transportation and housing. really not sure how to respond to this other than to point out the many regional planning agencies which exist, right now, and do effective work at expanding transportation infrastructure, right now. oregon famously placed land use and transportation planning at the regional level, cutting out home rule, in 1973 and that was like... yeah that is why oregon has growth boundaries and punches way above its weight class in terms of robust urbanism and mass transit Ardennes posted:
feels like your goalposts are shifting here but you're not going to find any disagreement with me that more funding is better. my contention is that more funding is not a sufficient solution to the problem, you can't just keep cranking that "more funding" dial past eleven before expecting to get anything done. at a certain point we're just placing our hopes on a level of funding which will never arrive as a way of giving up on the problem Greg12 posted:Pete sucks because honestly i dont even think pete buttigeig exists. please prove that he is a real person and not some kind of ethereal ghoul who haunts twitter. he has dashed our dreams beneath the wicked rubber feet of his chicken legged hut, i guess
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Jan 4, 2021 23:51
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:feels like your goalposts are shifting here but you're not going to find any disagreement with me that more funding is better. my contention is that more funding is not a sufficient solution to the problem, you can't just keep cranking that "more funding" dial past eleven before expecting to get anything done. at a certain point we're just placing our hopes on a level of funding which will never arrive as a way of giving up on the problem Right now the "more funding" dial is at like, 2. We're nowhere near the point where the best next step isn't billions more dollars. quote:honestly i dont even think pete buttigeig exists. please prove that he is a real person and not some kind of ethereal ghoul who haunts twitter. he has dashed our dreams beneath the wicked rubber feet of his chicken legged hut, i guess He's actually a learning AI trained on ten thousand McKensey pitch decks.
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Jan 5, 2021 00:01
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i mean jeez, regional planning is the lever robert moses used to become the shadow mayor-lich of new york
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Jan 5, 2021 00:07
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you named America's one regional government, formed in 1973, almost 50 years ago. Here, I'll spot you the only other thing close: Minneapolis area tax sharing, started in 1971. That's it. There are no other regional governments in America. Everything ends at the city limits. It's all tiny jurisdictions created to keep white money from going to pay for black schools, who now spend their time trying to attract revenue-positive land uses and drive away revenue-negative land uses, all the way down. If another region votes to form a regional government and make local governments subservient to it or even answerable to it, I'll have been proven wrong. There are special districts that provide services to regions, like the Metropolitan Water District or BART. They don't govern or tax. Everything else is voluntary and does not have elected positions. They don't have constituencies. Their plans have no force of law. You're daydreaming just as hard as the people who wish for early 1970s-level public transit spending when you wish for another thing that Americans last did in the early 1970s. It's fun, but you're out of line to scold people doing the same thing as you. Greg12 fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Jan 5, 2021 |
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Jan 5, 2021 00:22
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Greg12 posted:There are no other regional governments in America. sorry, this argument is bizarre. are you trying to say many regional planning agencies aren't muscular enough to do anything effective? if so, you are repeating my argument back at me. to claim they don't exist though... im not sure our realties overlap sufficiently for us to be able to effectively communicate on this topic https://www.planning.dot.gov/documents/RTPO_factsheet_Master.pdf
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Jan 5, 2021 00:27
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:sorry, this argument is bizarre. are you trying to say many regional planning agencies aren't muscular enough to do anything effective? if so, you are repeating my argument back at me. to claim they don't exist though... im not sure our realties overlap sufficiently for us to be able to effectively communicate on this topic yes you are the only one in the world privy to the secret rites of MPOs again, daydreaming about a federal government that provides operations money after it provides capital money is no different than daydreaming that it will wave a magic wand and turn MPOs into governments that can levy taxes, so stop scolding people for it!
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Jan 5, 2021 01:06
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Greg12 posted:again, daydreaming about a federal government that provides operations money after it provides capital money is no different than daydreaming that it will wave a magic wand and turn MPOs into governments that can levy taxes, so stop scolding people for it! i have no idea where you got this idea from, certainly not me and probably not anyone itt, so i wish you luck on your hero's journey to find someone to have this argument with i guess
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Jan 5, 2021 01:12
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:feels like your goalposts are shifting here but you're not going to find any disagreement with me that more funding is better. my contention is that more funding is not a sufficient solution to the problem, you can't just keep cranking that "more funding" dial past eleven before expecting to get anything done. at a certain point we're just placing our hopes on a level of funding which will never arrive as a way of giving up on the problem If the federal government is going to give up on providing more funding, then let's be honest very little is going to be done. It isn't just about the corruption or incompetence of local governments, but they just don't have the capital to do the heavy lifting on rail investment. LA getting some federal funding isn't good enough, they need the billions they asked for. Can Biden and Buttgieg snap their fingers and get it? No, but certainly they can leverage the power they have if they wanted to. It really isn't a "progressive policy" issue at this point but that urban centers in the US really aren't functioning like they should. ------- Also, Portland had victories here and there, but the growth boundary was very far from a magic solution and while the Portland metro has become more dense, infrastructure spending in pretty much every form has lagged among a bunch of other issues. Also, density doesn't necessarily mean affordability and while tons of luxury apartment were built, I have never seen a city of its size with such a massive homelessness crisis. There is no quick fix here, but a lot of it if the Federal government is interested in doing anything or not. I am not even talking about operations money, but literally, like there has to be some capital spending at some point. Portland is interesting in that it "did everything it should" but the result was a mess and some consideration probably should be done of what happened. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Jan 5, 2021 |
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Jan 5, 2021 01:20
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Ardennes posted:If the federal government is going to give up on providing more funding, then let's be honest very little is going to be done. It isn't just about the corruption or incompetence of local governments, but they just don't have the capital to do the heavy lifting on rail investment. i mean, they often do? with the general caveat that we can only speak in generalities when discussing the thousands of sub-national jurisdictions at play, then generally of the four primary sources of funding available for transit - federal, state, local, and user - local is the largest share of the plurality, with all being equally important. the main thing about local and user funding is that it is consistent(ish, barring a pandemic) as farebox and sales tax and whatnot (car tags, TIF schemes, i dunno, recycling cans or something) can be used as a steady flow of funds to pay drivers and keep the lights on. the feds show up sometimes with big sacks of money to be used mostly for capital improvement, but if some agency didn't make the cut for BUILD this year then they have to push for a local SPLOST or something. last time i dug for the numbers, federal share of capital improvement was roughly the same as local share. i would assume that the main reason the feds are so often involved in new starts and groundbreakings is that the giant windfalls given out by FTA are better suited towards line expansion, where smaller and more regular pots of capital expansion through bonds or whatever are better suited towards replacing bus fleets or smaller, more regular capital needs Ardennes posted:LA getting some federal funding isn't good enough, they need the billions they asked for. Can Biden and Buttgieg snap their fingers and get it? No, but certainly they can leverage the power they have if they wanted to. i think they want to, the only evidence i've seen to the contrary is terminally online ritualized hopelessness. as to whether this funding will be enough - no, because the federal government is too dysfunctional at this time to be effective at providing a decent standard of living, but we all agree on that. that's pretty far though from just assuming this imaginary buttigeg person will be too busy harvesting adrenochrome or whatever to push for grant program expansion Ardennes posted:Portland is interesting in that it "did everything it should" but the result was a mess and some consideration probably should be done of what happened. my main intention of bringing up portland is showing what is possible if a state gets its poo poo together and gets serious about redefining how home rule works within state borders. remember that states have the authority to define municipal and regional powers, states have the actual level of power that a lot of folks describe the feds as having (if not the same fat wallet) Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 01:41 on Jan 5, 2021 |
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Jan 5, 2021 01:39
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:i have no idea where you got this idea from, certainly not me and probably not anyone itt, so i wish you luck on your hero's journey to find someone to have this argument with i guess reread your posts if you think you're not a scold; I don't know what to tell you. Let people say that Pete sucks because they don't think he will use the significant power he will have as Transportation Secretary to do good things, because he does suck, the office has power, and his CV indicates that he won't do good with it. Transportation and land use and cities are regional system that know no municipal boundaries. You say that funding needs to be regional, but the only governments that can levy taxes or pass laws are cities, counties, and states. To show that regional action is possible, you linked to an organization that exists only to coordinate the doling out of Federal dollars and that consists of city council members who have an extra night a month to go to hearings. It can't tax. It can't legislate. It "coordinates." If you think coordination gets you anything in America of 2021, go look at the COVID case timelines. You're daydreaming like everyone else. Lighten up and let us hate Pete, for pete's sake.
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Jan 5, 2021 01:57
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Greg12 posted:Lighten up and let us hate Pete, for pete's sake. i'm not silencing you or anything, i'm just criticizing your arguments as being vacant gibberish. i've said itt i dont think pete (who isn't real) is great or anything but there isn't anything to substantiate any of the performative misery either Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Jan 5, 2021 |
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Jan 5, 2021 02:12
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:i mean, they often do? with the general caveat that we can only speak in generalities when discussing the thousands of sub-national jurisdictions at play, then generally of the four primary sources of funding available for transit - federal, state, local, and user - local is the largest share of the plurality, with all being equally important. the main thing about local and user funding is that it is consistent(ish, barring a pandemic) as farebox and sales tax and whatnot (car tags, TIF schemes, i dunno, recycling cans or something) can be used as a steady flow of funds to pay drivers and keep the lights on. the feds show up sometimes with big sacks of money to be used mostly for capital improvement, but if some agency didn't make the cut for BUILD this year then they have to push for a local SPLOST or something. last time i dug for the numbers, federal share of capital improvement was roughly the same as local share. i would assume that the main reason the feds are so often involved in new starts and groundbreakings is that the giant windfalls given out by FTA are better suited towards line expansion, where smaller and more regular pots of capital expansion through bonds or whatever are better suited towards replacing bus fleets or smaller, more regular capital needs. And? Oregon laid out an entire plan but without adequate equity, it became a mess. It isn’t enough on its own.
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Jan 5, 2021 02:55
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Ardennes posted:The issue is that e Federal government needs to be picking up more than half of capital improvements, they have the deep pockets here. Btw, I have been talking about capital improvements this entire time, so there is no reason to side track here. you said this quote:It isn't just about the corruption or incompetence of local governments, but they just don't have the capital to do the heavy lifting on rail investment. this is generally not true, check page 10 - localities historically cough up as much as the feds do for capital funding projects https://www.apta.com/wp-content/upl...ground-Data.pdf i have already agreed with you the fed needs to do more, i do not see the point of further agreement with you on this subject. regardless, even if the alleged individual who does not actually exist, pete buttigieg, manages to quadruple grants to transit agencies for new funding, it's not going to be enough to meaningfully expand transit due to continual structural flaws in the federal government which generally prevent an equally adequate provision of operational funding - a particularly acute obstacle during the pandemic since the recession directly attacks the ability of localities to self-fund through farebox and tax receipt. the power to rebuild american transit does not meaningfully rest in the hands of the secretary of transportation over the next 4-8 years. any efforts this person could make will be not enough, so preemptively saying this person has failed at the job is a bit of a misunderstanding regarding the scale of the job and the steps necessary to fix it Ardennes posted:So wait he is preemptively beyond judgement? If the Federal government is really that dysfunctional, maybe people have a right to be pessimistic because it doesn’t you are providing much evidence otherwise. is the burden of proof on me to prove that the completely made up, not real person pete buttigieg actually cares about what he openly states he cares about? if i have to assertively deconstruct goon cynicism then no thanks feel free to judge him if you want but if the judgement passed against him could be applied equally to any other candidate for the job on the merit that empty suits are all the same then, maybe, it is not actually a relevant or insightful criticism
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Jan 5, 2021 05:10
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:is the burden of proof on me to prove that the completely made up, not real person pete buttigieg actually cares about what he openly states he cares about? if i have to assertively deconstruct goon cynicism then no thanks Actually yes since his past actions indicate he doesn't give a gently caress.
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Jan 5, 2021 05:11
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really a lot of violent agreement itt except on points more ideological than policy-based. my expectation of the holographic construct mayor pete is that he will be at best quietly competent. arguably warnock and ossoff are more relevant towards the future of american transportation in the short term
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Jan 5, 2021 05:30
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For lighter content, even though there's been a million of these graphics and they rarely contain anything new, I still like them: https://twitter.com/saraklind/status/1346161721162014721?s=19
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Jan 5, 2021 06:04
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Not the USA, but Vancouver, British Columbia has some (not elected) regional government layers. There's Metro Vancouver quote:Metro Vancouver is a federation of 21 municipalities, one Electoral Area and one Treaty First Nation that collaboratively plans for and delivers regional-scale services. Its core services are drinking water, wastewater treatment and solid waste management. Metro Vancouver also regulates air quality, plans for urban growth, manages a regional parks system and provides affordable housing. The regional district is governed by a Board of Directors of elected officials from each local authority. and Translink quote:TransLink, officially the South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority, is a regional transportation authority created by the South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority Act.
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Jan 5, 2021 06:45
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:really a lot of violent agreement itt except on points more ideological than policy-based. quote:my expectation of the holographic construct mayor pete is that he will be at best quietly competent.
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Jan 5, 2021 07:48
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Please infiltrate your city's "historical preservation" committee and stop them from pulling bullshit like this: https://twitter.com/WedgeLIVE/status/1344448090057670657 Maybe it's just the "preservationists" from the Twin Cities, but their agenda seems less "retain structures of meaningful historical significance" and more "gently caress CHANGE. gently caress YOU. PRESERVE THE CITY IN AMBER SO IT CAN BE DUG UP IN 2000 YEARS LIKE POMPEII". I don't know if they're truly the most anal people in the world or if they're just disingenuously veiling their agenda to increase property values and erect procedural barriers they know only the big developers have the resources to surmount.
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Jan 6, 2021 02:19
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The bar for historical preservation should be faaaarrr higher yeah. It gets abused all the loving time.
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Jan 6, 2021 02:40
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Cugel the Clever posted:For lighter content, even though there's been a million of these graphics and they rarely contain anything new, I still like them: Hmm seems like bicycles are a problem
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Jan 6, 2021 11:55
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mobby_6kl posted:Hmm seems like bicycles are a problem I was actually wondering what kind of rich people luxury bus gives you nine of your very own square feet.
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Jan 7, 2021 00:15
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im assuming that includes leading/trailing space around the vehicle and not just seat space, hence why each bike is 15 sq/ft
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Jan 7, 2021 03:09
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my local city is planning to redesign one of the busier intersections and erm... how is this going to improve throughput? They still require red lights ON roundabout ? I can see several nightmare scenarios where a blockage grinds the whole section to a halt It looks like it's made in cities skylines lol.  Current setup: 
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Jan 13, 2021 16:10
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double nine posted:my local city is planning to redesign one of the busier intersections and erm... how is this going to improve throughput? They still require red lights ON roundabout ? I can see several nightmare scenarios where a blockage grinds the whole section to a halt This design looks identical to what we use in the UK for busy motorway junctions, works fine. The traffic lights are required when the traffic gets above a certain level, as the roundabout can get “hogged” (not the technical term) by traffic in one direction, blocking anyone joining from its immediate left. In some cases the traffic lights are turned off outside rush hour to speed things up when traffic is light. n.b. I think you’ll bypass the lights if you’re turning right at least.
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Jan 13, 2021 16:24
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im not a traffic engineer but the main thing is reducing how often people have to turn across different lanes of traffic. eliminating left turns across halted lanes of traffic (in a left side drive system) is a big source of throughput gains, this is the idea behind a diverging diamond intersection, which is a design that can be retrofitted into existing major roadway intersections while also cutting down on the number of problematic intersection points between lanes of traffic as mentioned above, the signals on that roundabout may only kick in during periods of heavy traffic to prevent people from blocking the intersection, though given that the roundabout has multiple traffic approaching directly from the left it may be more likely to be an always signaled intersection. at that point it is a safety issue, large trucks may be obscuring other, faster vehicles and so on unlike a lot of urban planning, traffic analysis is heavily quantized and modeled using all kinds of software so they could probably near-objectively demonstrate that this design leads to 12.3% gains in throughput or whatever. a lot of weird roadway designs come out this way, including controversial stuff like variably priced express lanes, because it seems counterintuitive but everything works out in math world
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Jan 13, 2021 16:36
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Was wondering if I could get any book, podcast, or YouTube recommendations on urban and regional planning. Have always had an interest in it (was my second choice for career, decided to do my Master's in something else) and listening to Robert Caro's book on Robert Moses last year has rekindled my desire to do a bit more of a dive into the subject. I'd like a couple of foundational texts that give a good overview for starters - I'm also interested in history, comparative stuff (how different countries or cities approach things), and have a weird, inexplicable interest in planned cities. To contribute, my partner and I have been doing a rewatch of Utopia (I think it's called Dreamland in the US), which is an Australian comedy show about a fictitious Nation Building Authority. It's definitely a comedy show first and foremost with the planning stuff as backdrop, but IIRC they have a prof or two who consults on the scripts as they do reference a lot of real issues in contemporary urban planning. They make a lot of hay with the conflicts that arise between wonkish bureaucrats and short-sighted, style-over-substance politicans. Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:im assuming that includes leading/trailing space around the vehicle and not just seat space, hence why each bike is 15 sq/ft Yeah, it makes sense when you think of the length of a bicycle, and how much space other vehicles are supposed to give a cyclist. double nine posted:It looks like it's made in cities skylines lol. Pretty sure it is, that's hilarious if actual urban planners are using it as a cheap rendering tool.
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Jan 15, 2021 07:00
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Ethics_Gradient posted:Was wondering if I could get any book, podcast, or YouTube recommendations on urban and regional planning. Have always had an interest in it (was my second choice for career, decided to do my Master's in something else) and listening to Robert Caro's book on Robert Moses last year has rekindled my desire to do a bit more of a dive into the subject. Check out A Pattern Language, by Christopher Alexander. he's put all of the patterns online, you can check them out to see if their content appeals to you. they're idealized design elements collected and synthesized from many societies (according to Alexander), ranging from what you'd call interior decorating to what you'd call urban planning.
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Jan 15, 2021 07:26
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The City in History by Mumford.
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Jan 15, 2021 08:38
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Crabgrass Frontier is also good.
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Jan 15, 2021 15:50
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Badger of Basra posted:Crabgrass Frontier is also good. yeah Crabgrass Frontier by Jackson is the best pop-hist single book i would recommend. it focuses on the history of american suburbia more than just how regional planning works, but if you read between the lines you get a good sense of the process. plus its a fun read. people often toss out Death and Life of Cities by Jacobs which is also fun if a bit mid-century dry but its more of an anti-Moses polemic and a critique of lovely urbanism in general. likewise anything Mumford has to say is going to be locked in the 1960s so, a bit dated at this point, but the man made a living on his writing so he can turn a phrase Image of the City by Lynch is one that gets read in planning school, it is about how cities are conceptualized by the people who live in them and move through them at ground level. it is easy to get trapped into seeing cities from the bird eye level as a map, and not as a series of connected places with people in them Kunstler is a wonderfully grumpy crank, i'd skip his recent turn to fiction because he longs for the post-oil apocalypse. his critiques of urban form and architecture though are brisk and he still updates his website. powerful bitter old man energy https://kunstler.com/featured-eyesore-of-the-month/ Calthorpe and Garreau are both proponents of new urbanism and have interesting stuff to say about polycentric regionalism, for Calthorpe check out Regional City and Garreau, Edge City. you can read Duany and Plater-Zyberk for similar stuff and a focus on new urbanism design but they also tend more towards shilling their studio than your average architect/planner-advocate does there's tons of books always coming out, the thing to watch for is books with something new to say that aren't just a rehash of the same old stuff. urban planning studies are getting more popular as a field of interest, and publishers have noticed. vet anything you buy first to ensure it is a good use of your money. one i read recently that was good is Zoned in the USA by Hirt, which is sort of like an outsiders perspective and comparative review of land use controls in america and european contexts, from an author who is a professor of planning in the US but was raised in iirc belgium
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Jan 15, 2021 20:13
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also for planned cities, look up anything contemporary talking about the Garden City movement and Ebenezer Howard
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Jan 15, 2021 20:20
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Cugel the Clever posted:Please infiltrate your city's "historical preservation" committee and stop them from pulling bullshit like this: Yea, the historical preservation committee in Minneapolis seems pretty bad for as long as I've lived here. Luckily, they seem to usually fail at keeping buildings from being torn down for no reason other than "they're old". Councilmember Fletcher had a great response to this project (https://www.startribune.com/minneapolis-planners-say-1969-modernist-building-downtown-shouldn-t-be-wrecked/600006606/): quote:City Council Member Steve Fletcher, who represents the area, said he was surprised by the staff recommendation to deny the demolition permit. The City Council will have final say in the matter, following the Preservation Commission's vote. Kalit fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Jan 15, 2021 |
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Jan 15, 2021 20:35
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https://twitter.com/BlockClubCHI/status/1354444155523633155?s=20 Chicago may pass minimum density requirements in a select area to prevent deconversion (turning 3- or 2-flats into single family homes). Would this be the first minimum density requirement in the US?
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Jan 27, 2021 16:20
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Badger of Basra posted:https://twitter.com/BlockClubCHI/status/1354444155523633155?s=20 What are we talking when we say deconversion? Are you talking about preventing houses that were originally built as single family homes and later converted into apartments from being changed back into single family homes?
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Jan 27, 2021 17:11
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PeterCat posted:What are we talking when we say deconversion? Are you talking about preventing houses that were originally built as single family homes and later converted into apartments from being changed back into single family homes? from the screenshots in the article, it looks like former SFH split into duplex/triplex housing that the owners want to merge back into a SFH this is legally tricky because it could constitute a taking of property value. probably why the city is keeping the scope of the ordinance narrow, to limit the number of people who could possibly lawyer up
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Jan 27, 2021 17:20
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PeterCat posted:What are we talking when we say deconversion? Are you talking about preventing houses that were originally built as single family homes and later converted into apartments from being changed back into single family homes? Yes although the term has been expanded to cover things originally built as 3- or 2-flats (buildings that look like three or two story SFH but are really multi-unit buildings) being turned into SFH for the first time.
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Jan 27, 2021 17:31
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Badger of Basra posted:Yes although the term has been expanded to cover things originally built as 3- or 2-flats (buildings that look like three or two story SFH but are really multi-unit buildings) being turned into SFH for the first time. Hmm. I looked at the Google street view of one of the streets. I'd say if the house was originally a SFH it should be eligible to be reconverted, but not if it was never a SFH to start with.
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Jan 27, 2021 18:41
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PeterCat posted:Hmm. I looked at the Google street view of one of the streets. I'd say if the house was originally a SFH it should be eligible to be reconverted, but not if it was never a SFH to start with. Why should a zoning authority regulating an inflationary housing market ever let housing density decrease?
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Jan 27, 2021 20:17
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:from the screenshots in the article, it looks like former SFH split into duplex/triplex housing that the owners want to merge back into a SFH I guess this is true but I would be curious how this is a taking but downzoning isn't
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Jan 27, 2021 20:38
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