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Badger of Basra posted:https://twitter.com/rabonour/status/1237424594526416896?s=20 good to see jane jacobs is still getting work
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Apr 28, 2020 04:12
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Cugel the Clever posted:Aren't property taxes a lagging indicator, though? They're paying a lot in property tax because property values in their area have gone up a lot. yeah this poo poo is what gets me going when I hear "COMMIEFORNIA"
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Apr 28, 2020 04:13
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Is anyone attending the online NPC?
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Apr 29, 2020 17:48
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Do any of you see a way out of the homevoter death spiral we're stuck in? How can the power of people who want to see more housing built ever overcome the power of people who don't want to see it built? Both the boomers who bought in low pre-crisis and the generation who bought in at the post-crisis inflated price have no interest in seeing more housing in their jurisdiction. People who would like to see more housing so that they can move into the jurisdiction do not get to vote in the jurisdiction. Place-based investors--that is, local businesses and commercial property owners--are finally starting to feel the pain of having to hire employees who commute two hours each way, but they are outnumbered at the polls by homevoters and can't turn out enough of a vote to swing city council seats. California tries and fails to override local land use controls at the state level, but it's easy to turn out even the exurban, 4-hour commuter vote against those legislators with the specter of BIG GOVERNMENT being mean to beloved local control. The only way out I see is if the housing stock in the shortage cities is so overcrowded with working adults living as roommates that they outnumber homevoters. You can tell I'm desperate to find some hope because I'm asking a forum of strangers that I just joined! Greg12 fucked around with this message at 19:52 on May 4, 2020 |
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May 4, 2020 19:44
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how does organizing in exurban sprawl affect decisions made by elected officials in the central city
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May 5, 2020 00:13
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The Oldest Man posted:ordinary people... unable to decouple themselves from the interests of the giant bank holding their mortgage note. Can you believe that the guy who coined the term "homevoter" meant it in a positive light!?
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Sep 17, 2020 16:58
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Re: Mandatory Parking Here's a vox.com article summarizing it: https://www.vox.com/2014/6/27/5849280/why-free-parking-is-bad-for-everyone Here's a magazine article by the guy himself, from back when he was first doing the work: https://www.accessmagazine.org/spring-1997/the-high-cost-of-free-parking/ It's pretty digestible. Here's the cover of his book:  ADORABLE. Real estate development summary: parking spaces are real expensive. they have to be paid for somehow. A 20 unit apartment building might be required to have with 20 parking spaces, and those spaces might cost $20,000 each (no really the research supports that price). If the cost of building them causes the ROI on the apartment to fall below the target, the apartment doesn't get built. That's 20 homes that don't exist in your city. Environmentalism summary: parking lots are huge. they consume a lot of land, they send a lot of nasty polluted runoff into our rivers, they make the urban heat island really bad, and they cause people to drive (see below) Urban design summary: parking lots are loving enormous and increase the distance between trip origins and destinations, making walking impossible and driving compulsory. (If you can't afford a car, you have to walk anyway, and that is hours spent in misery.) Walking across or along one parking lot might add a quarter mile to your trip, but when every shopping center and apartment has a quarter mile of parking, your destination is miles away. Transportation summary: all of the parking spreads people out, making it harder for a bus network to have stops within walking distances of enough people to make running the bus worthwhile. All that extra driving means political demand to widen roads to chase that free-flowing traffic "Level of Service" dragon. Economic summary: forcing landowners and developers to provide more parking than they otherwise would is a subsidy supporting driving, paid for by people without cars Don Shoup says: Cities should stop forcing developers to provide parking. If there is a demand for parking, they will provide it. If more people want to park than there is room, put a price on the parking. I say: We already spent trillions of dollars building city and neighborhood streets that are twice as wide as they need to be for fire trucks and garbage trucks to maneuver in them. We did this so that there would be free street parking at every curb, everywhere. If that parking isn't being used, it's wasted space. It is disgusting to dedicate so much of our cities and so much work to giving cars places to sleep when there are people who have no places to sleep. Greg12 fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Sep 20, 2020 |
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Sep 20, 2020 17:58
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London planners, postwar: "Ello Guv. Public places would be better if they were privately owned and inaccessible." London planners, post-High Line: "quite so, but they can only work if they're WIGGLY and have lots of tripping hazards." Here's my favorite planning movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GGqSkDXOSg The blocking is just so much fun. They get up on those wheeled stairs and draw straight lines fifty feet long while handing off the narrative to other architects in gray flannel suits. See if you can catch the sneaky framing in the "OMG BLIGHT" shot, where they didn't quite keep the entire street full of well-maintained row houses out of one of the shots of the one house on the street with a crumbling porch.
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Oct 1, 2020 19:31
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luxury handset posted:sociologist william h whyte did some good work studying how people use urban spaces - their field research was basically just hanging out on rooftops filming people in public using public spaces. his book "the social life of small urban spaces" was influential, and there was a companion documentary which is pretty funny in its observations of human behavior. it always gets pulled down from copyright claims but it's worth finding a copy if possible. notable highlights - people love to move poo poo and if people are having a conversation in public, they prefer to stand directly in the middle of traffic flow Every midcentury pedestrian mall failed because they ignored everything in this. "These suburban malls are killing central business district retail! What can we do?" "Those malls have managed tenant mixes that include the same chains that are in the CBD, are closer to the shoppers' new white flight neighborhoods, have acres of free parking, are indoors, and have fountains with geometric planters. QUICK! BUILD FOUNTAINS AND GEOMETRIC PLANTERS! TEN BLOCKS OF THEM!"
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Oct 1, 2020 21:21
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Why don't the homevoters understand that allowing them to build bigger things will make Their Precious appreciate even more in value I cannot ever understand these assholes
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Oct 14, 2020 15:37
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"it turns out that the old man in Up was the villain"
Greg12 fucked around with this message at 23:44 on Oct 14, 2020 |
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Oct 14, 2020 21:53
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Another month, another issue of Planning Magazine with an article about how staff reports suck. They've been writing the same article every year since at least the one in the 80s "Best of Planning Magazine" book. There is something public officials can do to build connections with the public in these times of "fake news," mistrust of politicians and data, and political division: speak clearly. As planners, we don't often think of ourselves as communications experts, but how much time do we spend writing reports, emails, news items, and sharing information? Quite a bit. And how often do we hear, "Wow, I really understood that traffic report," or "That data was really clear. Can we talk about tradeoffs?" Probably a lot less often. Our first reaction is often something like "People just don't take the time to understand what I'm producing," or "I work with very technical information." Both are probably true. We have specialized knowledge, and if we want that knowledge to be useful in the world, we need other people to understand us. Sometimes, we might even worry that writing simply will make us seem unintelligent or unprofessional. But I believe that simple, clear writing is the most professional way to communicate. Writing documents nobody understands doesn't make us sound smart — it makes us sound evasive and untrustworthy. It also wastes time and resources. Many of our workplaces have a deeply entrenched habit of writing in cumbersome, legalistic, technical language. It's time we change that. So, in the interest of building better communities through plain language, I offer four ways planners can start today: 1. Be Straightforward. I know my field's terms and assumptions, but others likely don't. When I give my governing board a memo saying a neighborhood requests no parking signs "due to ongoing vehicle access issues resulting from vehicles parked on both sides of the streets," what I really mean is "parked cars are blocking people driving through the neighborhood." Nobody in the real world talks about "vehicle access issues." We need to scour our writing for jargon and bureaucratic terms. I like to pretend I'm talking to my teenager — the one who tunes me out if I go into techno-speak. Translation is key. 2. Be Honest. We build trust through honesty. Plain language is clear; it tells us who did what and why. Clarity and honesty show what we're doing. It can feel vulnerable, but it's the right thing to do. 3. Be Logical. We need to help the reader along. I like to think about what needs to be said and organize it before I start writing. Do we want them to do something? Put the most important information at the top. Does it only apply to certain people? Let them know at the beginning. Headings help readers skim for key information, and tables and charts can replace lengthy prose. I once worked on a driving policy covering several types of drivers and differing training requirements. Using a simple decision-tree chart made it easy for anyone to quickly figure out which standard applied to them. This isn't dumbing things down; it's making everyone smarter. 4. Be Kind. Treat the reader the way you'd like to be treated. How many times have you received an email that was so dense and complicated, your heart sank? When was the last time you actually read the Terms of Service before clicking "agree"? When we blanket information in jargon, tumble it across the page, and hide it in prose, we lose our readers — and worse, we might also lose their trust. Discourse is necessary, especially today. It happens best when we're sharing ideas and information, not burying each other in miscommunication. We can best serve and support our communities by presenting important information in ways they can easily understand. Simply put: It's our job.
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Nov 2, 2020 19:39
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I think it's more that management is full of people who think that it is good to do things the same forever, and that word processing means that the same paragraphs are reused forever. By that I mean, "We've always written the report in this format. How dare you suggest a change?" More than that, we write reports that don't even dare to touch on the issues that matter to the reader. Planning commissioners and city councils make decisions based on big issues, and planners should be giving them advice on how developments would affect the city and the important issues, especially because we (should be) the people in the room representing The People of the Future and the effect on the city as a whole. Will the development let people get things they need without driving? Will it make rents go up or down? How will it affect <sideshow bob rake shudder> parking? Instead, we decided that we get our legitimacy from being impartial technicians who devise and implement rules people don't give a poo poo about. So, we The result is a 30-page report that doesn't have any of the information that people want or need, and an objective* recommendation that very often would make the neighborhood, city, and region worse. *It's funny how the objective judgment on whether a development "has harmonious human scale architectural forms with colors that fit the character" can depend on a conversation between the department head and a city councilman. Greg12 fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Nov 2, 2020 |
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Nov 2, 2020 21:08
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Squalid posted:not really relevant to anything but i just saw this video about this large project to expand the Paris underground and I thought it was interesting. choochoo trains are always relevant
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Nov 2, 2020 21:53
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Greg12 posted:choochoo trains are always relevant Until now. With McKenzie Pete as Transportation Secretary, we're going to lose Senility Joe's only positive attribute: His absolute grandfatherly love of choochoos. Let's all get ready for four-to-eight years of designing our cities around imaginary robot cars and Intelligent Transportation Systems. gently caress.
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Dec 16, 2020 23:06
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:eh, i see this complaint a lot and i think it is just a more acute thing to complain about rather than the deep structural issue of local transit systems not finding one-time injections of capital funding as useful as sustained, committed operational funding. DoT and HUD are more likely to hand out grants for studies and the like then they are to sign on for twenty years of subsidizing driver pay and fuel costs, and this is not going to change as long as we are likely to tack back into the "let's burn down government" party yes but I was looking forward to Joe signing giant novelty checks for New Starts projects based on applications that include O-guage layouts, and seeing the job go to the absolute worst management consultant shitheel has me pissed off
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Dec 16, 2020 23:21
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would hipster stalin please send these nimbys and atomized local governments to the cross-laminated timber gulag so we can have frequent bus service
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Jan 4, 2021 19:00
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wishing for regional government is just as absurd as wishing for a federal government that spends money on transportation and housing. Pete sucks because his job is to make the regulations that implement the laws, and if he weren't a monster, he could make sure what little money exists goes toward good things instead of fare enforcement cops and robot cars. Small choices in funding rubrics like giving higher scores to projects that will use NACTO manuals instead of AASHTO could be everything. Administrative Federal regulations on how to spend mortgage insurance money are why we are stuck with the suburbs we have. If admin rules are powerful enough to be The Color of Law, they are powerful enough to get us some bus lanes. And Pete will be in charge of FMVSS, which is also administrative. With the stroke of a pen (and the subsequent year of work by a hundred bureaucrats), we could be rid of pedestrian-killing brodozers, touchscreen dashboards, and Camaro-style slit windows. But, he doesn't strike me as the type who cares whether poor people die. Greg12 fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Jan 4, 2021 |
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Jan 4, 2021 23:21
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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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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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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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lots of places have minimum density and protect lower-price housing types from conversion like, everywhere I've ever worked
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Jan 27, 2021 23:38
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The Reluctant Metropolis. I cannot recommend this book enough for people who want a look behind the scenes at the growth machine that gave us sunbelt cities and the forces that shut it down in California. So many books talk about the history of city building starting with, like, The Law of the Indies and going through the industrial revolution and garden cities and stopping with 9/1 highway funding and Levittown. This one has a preface or introduction to get the reader up to 1970, and then dumps you right into the Santa Monica hippies who made "NIMBY" a the exhilarting battlecry of their generation, and who'd go on to make it the disgusting dirty word it is to ours. The author does have a touch of that boomer bias, but is good enough at telling the stories he tells that it only registers as little bit of a raised eyebrow, and--I think--adds to the flavor of the book, helping you understand why they thought they were doing the right thing.
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Feb 10, 2021 04:18
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you know who else was into frequent and punctual public transit? mussolini
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Feb 12, 2021 19:08
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Source: Dimly remembered history book  the people who invented rent control didn't think it would make cities affordable. it is intended to protect tenants--hopefully why while other things happen to bring down rent and sales prices.
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Apr 30, 2021 22:39
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mobby_6kl posted:
was it difficult living in a gravitational vortex did you hang out with mc escher
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May 9, 2023 22:37
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  https://goo.gl/maps/oABdWAo8eM2CA4Bg9 Greg12 posted:"it turns out that the old man in Up was the villain"
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May 9, 2023 22:50
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https://twitter.com/ajlamesa/status/1660006734172127233 this will be the end of "planning as a process" inshallah
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May 21, 2023 16:16
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x
Greg12 fucked around with this message at 22:46 on Aug 21, 2023 |
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May 23, 2023 20:39
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city planning is reactive reaganism broke government
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Jun 17, 2023 01:58
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American right: put the homeless in cattle trailers and drive them into the desert to die American left: put the homeless in cattle trailers and drive them to West Plattsburgh to die
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Aug 2, 2023 00:59
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pointing to a vacancies while saying "the housing supply isn't the problem, see?" in a vacuum is what dogshit nimbys in powerful positions have done for a decade because they actually believe that, if you don't build a new building, new people won't move to the city, and nothing will ever change, and they can be 24 years old forever.
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Aug 4, 2023 15:09
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We would make a huger dent in the carbon we put in the atmosphere if we just stop spending money on cars not one more new lane-mile
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Aug 22, 2023 14:33
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Baronash posted:I'm curious if anyone has run across any research paper or study or comprehensive plan that actually sets out to examine what it would take to retrofit an existing suburb for usable transit and walkability? It's pretty easy to find articles that speak about it in broad terms, or bring up some example of a particular neighborhood within a town that is uncharacteristically walkable, but I'd love to see an actual A-Z plan for a specific town that goes over how it could be done. Sprawl Repair Manual comes at it from the urban design side. "Draw a grid in the mall parking lot!" The better Retrofitting Suburbia comes at it from the real estate development side and describes actual projects and the regulatory changes and financing that got them built. Count Roland posted:Maybe he was joking I dunno If you want to carry water for GM, Elon, Canadian *mining* companies' lithium subsidiaries, and your local asphalt contractors, feel free. I'm under no obligation to "be realistic" and fight to continue inducing VMT. There are public works engineers who still push cities to block homes because of impacts to level of service, ffs. I'm here to shrink streets so the bus goes faster, cars go slower, and fewer kids get run over. Chevron isn't negotiating with itself on your behalf to reduce the amount of oil it pumps. GM isn't planning to shut down the Silverado and eHummer lines. The rich people from your local golf course exurbs aren't coming to the table having pre-accepted any limitation on their ability to come speeding through your neighborhood on their way someplace else. Why are you compromising with yourself before you even begin? The only way to be realistic is to demand the impossible. Greg12 fucked around with this message at 19:50 on Aug 24, 2023 |
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Aug 24, 2023 18:39
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Like I said, you're all free to negotiate yourselves down to failure before you even meet with your opponents. I won't. I don't know what to tell you if you think the bad guys are coming to the table having already negotiated with themselves on your behalf that public transportation should exist, that it should be legal to build anything within walking distance of anything else, or that there should be new homes in their high-resource neighborhood. We do not have the five 20-year comprehensive plan cycles it will take on your "realistic" time scale to harden our civilization against climate change. Jfc.
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Aug 24, 2023 20:49
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Ham Equity posted:When does this start? Because as of now, it's the most gas-guzzling vehicles that continue to be the best-selling. we can have houses within walking distance of stores with sidewalks connecting them once the plurality of voters in the 26 least-populated states are free enough from gas price pressure that gas prices cease to be a culture war lever and the sitting senators of those states when that demographic shift happens die of old age
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Sep 1, 2023 15:22
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Cugel the Clever posted:It sure seems like environmental regulations are regularly weaponized against proposals for urbanization or alternate transportation infrastructure, stalling them out for ages at huge expense, yet car infrastructure just gets insta-approved without anyone bringing spurious suits. Urbanists really should be copying that play against road and highway construction, if only to call sufficient attention to get the process changed. people who want more apartment buildings and less sprawl are too poor to afford public interest lawyers' legal fees. that's the problem with laws enforced by private parties paying lawyers, like every state's environmental review laws. Quorum posted:...but many of the horror stories are because project proponents tried to circumvent the process, rather than because of the process itself. Is it really possible that every freeway department and sprawl county planning commission studied and considered every environmental impact perfectly while transit agencies and infill city planning commission manage to never complete a study accurately? gtfo. it's that rich people, their environmental lawyers, and the judges who consider the cases are all homeowning carbrains.
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Sep 7, 2023 14:30
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Jaxyon posted:No it's not. LA has spent over a billion on this and there still thousands of buildings that need a retrofit. why would new buildings be built to the old building code why would you need to retrofit new buildings built to the new building code ---------------- before the death of retail, it took 37sf of residential space to support 1sf of retail/service god knows what it is now that all shopping is online and people eat at restaurants more if any business or social sciences school has done a paper on it since the 90s, please post it here.
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Sep 22, 2023 15:18
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kiminewt posted:Sure, I agree. But a common case is one where you have to wait at a light to make a left turn to get into the "correct" bike lane, or you could just make an immediate left into an opposite direction bike lane without waiting for the light (see illustration, blue being one of the normal ways and red being a bad way). I think this is a case where there isn't a simple solution and the blame can be placed on the rider. rules are for cars
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Sep 29, 2023 03:38
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won't somebody please think of the dire shortage of places for cars to drive in the usa (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Nov 8, 2023 16:03
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