tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-107268942011-07-14T20:44:27.822-04:00Stacy McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01090350065017641343noreply@blogger.comBlogger321100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10726894.post-1144074590341636952006-04-03T09:45:00.000-04:002006-04-03T10:29:50.376-04:00

One of my coworkers likes to blame the world's problems on overpopulation. There are too many people, consuming too much (especially in America) and the planet can't sustain it all. Of course he's doing his bit ...to be part of the problem. For the two people and two dogs in his household, the minimum necessary transportation equipment seems to be two Land Rovers and one full-size pickup with

Stacy McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01090350065017641343noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10726894.post-1134755699413556352005-12-16T12:41:00.000-05:002005-12-16T12:56:44.240-05:00

The Washington Times has a review of Robert Bruegmann's Sprawl: A Compact History (link via Planetizen). The book, which I haven't read yet, is said to dispel "anti-sprawl shibboleths", but the review engages in a few anti-planning shibboleths of its own.[...] if we limited growth, wouldn't we relieve traffic congestion and pollution? It's a mystery how this argument ever got any traction.

Stacy McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01090350065017641343noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10726894.post-1120139123947253032005-06-30T09:24:00.000-04:002005-06-30T10:37:52.866-04:00

...just that it won't be good for planners, if the public associates us with high-handed Kelo-based condemnations.Here's a great example. The city of Freeport, TX intends to use eminent domain to transfer three downtown properties on the Brazos River to a developer who will build a marina there. The stated goal is to bring in $60 million worth of hotels and restaurants, revitalizing the downtown

Stacy McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01090350065017641343noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10726894.post-1119616305613912012005-06-24T08:03:00.000-04:002005-06-24T08:31:45.636-04:00

Instapundit has a nice (and balanced) roundup of the blog reactions this morning. One interesting point made is that if we're now going to have an eminent domain free-for-all, a lot of downtown churches may find their buildings condemned to make way for, say, loft condos. The urban poor will, as usual, be the most vulnerable--removed to make way for WalMart and the like.Planners first arrived on

Stacy McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01090350065017641343noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10726894.post-1119543062920899092005-06-23T11:26:00.000-04:002005-06-23T12:11:02.966-04:00

I'm of two hearts on the decision.First, it's an unambiguous defeat for property rights. The libertarian in me can't find any silver lining in the fact that, as Justice O'Connor writes in the dissent, "Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party". (quote bogarted from Ken Wheaton) with the benefits going to -of course- the richest and most influential citizens and

Stacy McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01090350065017641343noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10726894.post-1115655299354675302005-05-09T11:48:00.000-04:002005-05-09T12:14:59.420-04:00

This is a student blog, so you shouldn't be too surprised at the lack of posting during finals season. I've got one thought, though, and a link (unrelated) for those who are more thoughtful about their new urbanism, or who just like old pictures.1.) About the political process of planning - because it's all about politics. There are a couple of essentially disconnected trains of thought in the

Stacy McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01090350065017641343noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10726894.post-1113858203370727622005-04-18T16:44:00.000-04:002005-04-18T17:03:23.370-04:00

The Post reports that the high cost of housing is pushing some DC-area residents into the sea--literally. If you can organize your life to fit on a boat, you can think about mortgage and slip fees as little as $800 a month, compared to $9-1400 for a 1-bedroom apartment or $2-4000 for any type of house. It's not just speculation; they found people from all walks of life who've given up on buying a

Stacy McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01090350065017641343noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10726894.post-1113591681201096712005-04-15T14:39:00.000-04:002005-04-15T15:02:20.446-04:00

As usual when new census data comes out, there are a flurry of stories about places that are seeing explosive growth. For example, the Washington, DC area added 75,000 people last year. Now it also turns out that 14 of the 100 fastest-growing counties in the US are in Florida. That's not so surprising, but the Orlando Sentinel story adds an interesting tidbit: an interview with the owner of a

Stacy McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01090350065017641343noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10726894.post-1113239513331428142005-04-11T13:11:00.000-04:002005-04-11T15:31:33.310-04:00

This rambling story in the Times details the plight of developers and would-be homebuyers in Virginia's DC suburbs. Land is nearly half the cost of a new house, builders are working flat out, the lead time (for zoning and public approval) for projects is getting longer due to NIMBYism and limited funding for the regulatory agencies that have to review proposals, and all while the costs of

Stacy McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01090350065017641343noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10726894.post-1112643665171107852005-04-04T15:41:00.000-04:002005-04-04T15:41:05.170-04:00

Today's Post has an informative article about the tribulations of the town of Scrabble, West Virginia as it deals with the arrival of the Washington, DC suburbs. The story is fairly straightforward: aware that a farm just outside the village was going up for auction and likely to become a housing tract, a group of local residents tried to raise the money to buy it. What's interesting is that the

Stacy McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01090350065017641343noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10726894.post-1112117692887721492005-03-29T12:21:00.000-05:002005-03-29T12:34:52.890-05:00

You probably remember when ZipCar and FlexCar came out a few years ago. It seemed like an interesting idea, but you wondered how it could actually work. Even if someone made a genuine effort to use only the shared car for necessary trips, it would be hard to actually give up their personal car--what about emergencies? If you need to go to the ER, and there's no FlexCar available, you're in a bad

Stacy McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01090350065017641343noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10726894.post-1111514628033349852005-03-22T12:32:00.000-05:002005-03-22T13:03:48.036-05:00

Just from the topics in that title, this could be a book. I'll try to keep it down to post-length. A thread on the Cyburbia forums cited an article in The Economist (requires a premium subscription, so I won't bother with a link) that blames development regulations for high housing prices in the West's most successful cities. The user who started the thread blamed planners for the regs, and thus

Stacy McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01090350065017641343noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10726894.post-1111460660513720432005-03-21T22:03:00.000-05:002005-03-22T13:06:10.440-05:00

We now have about a 20-year history of zoning in our rural town. We followed what seemed to be a typical pattern of defining the residential zone as being the already built-up area, barring it to commercial and industrial activity (with no distinction made between the two), leaving those to be addressed on a case basis in the non-residential areas only.One result has been that nearly all of the

Terry McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08343733254257564186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10726894.post-1110911254053123552005-03-15T13:16:00.000-05:002005-03-15T13:30:41.430-05:00

Here's an interesting idea--take the extended backyards of older narrow-lot houses with back alleys, and build lowrise condos with underground parking (for both the houses and the condos) along the alley. You get a whole extra set of streets (presumably trash collection is curbside, not through the alley) and the equivalent of at least one granny flat per house. It wouldn't likely fly in most of

Stacy McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01090350065017641343noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10726894.post-1110552493340136602005-03-11T09:30:00.000-05:002005-03-11T09:48:13.343-05:00

New Urban News says it didn't, citing hiccups in census data on Portlanders' incomes, and value-added renovations of older housing to explain the increases. Yet as the article admits, home prices undeniably jumped about 65% from 1990 to 2000. Some have suggested that the reason it's not worse is that growth goes across the Columbia River to Clark County, WA. Maybe. An uncontroversial statement

Stacy McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01090350065017641343noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10726894.post-1110551310946063142005-03-11T09:16:00.000-05:002005-03-11T09:28:30.950-05:00

...so goes the nation? The Christian Science Monitor says California will make it easier to build homes: (hat tip: Planetizen)"We're near a tipping point for public policy," says Duane Bay, a housing consultant in East Palo Alto, Calif. "There is broad consensus that we have to build additional housing."[...] The median home price in the San Francisco Bay Area, traditionally the costliest market

Stacy McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01090350065017641343noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10726894.post-1110217416151076262005-03-07T12:43:00.000-05:002005-03-07T12:43:36.150-05:00

It strikes me that this is also one of the big reasons why "town centers" are popping up in greenfield exurban subdivisions: After three years of renting, the couple paid $226,000 in January for a house in an El Centro subdivision where grass has yet to be planted on all the lawns. "We were never going to be able to afford a home in San Diego," said Ramirez, who now works at El Centro Regional

Stacy McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01090350065017641343noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10726894.post-1110217035704381442005-03-07T11:49:00.001-05:002005-03-07T12:37:15.706-05:00

Joel Kotkin flogs his pragmatic approach to running a city in today's LA Times. I usually stop reading things like this about halfway through, but that would have been a mistake in this case, because Kotkin makes a couple of good points down below the fold:When it can take more than an hour to travel the 14 miles to downtown, you stop thinking about City Hall and look for local alternatives. "We

Stacy McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01090350065017641343noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10726894.post-1110159852205040932005-03-06T20:24:00.000-05:002005-03-06T20:44:12.213-05:00

There isn't a lot of news out of the SCOTUS arguments yet. Several op-ed columnists and editorial pages have weighed in, all predictably on the side of the little guy. More interesting is the list of amicus briefs filed in the case, which has some distinguished names on it. Jane Jacobs has this to say:See, e.g., JACOBS, DEATH AND LIFE OF GREAT AMERICAN CITIES [...] (describing massive harms

Stacy McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01090350065017641343noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10726894.post-1109786629784774342005-03-02T12:33:00.000-05:002005-03-02T13:09:59.996-05:00

The Fort Trumbull eminent domain case goes in front of the Supreme Court. The defense seems to have picked a salesman to argue their case, while the plaintiffs have made what are probably some strange bedfellows in arguing their case.What's the case? Well, that's the main point of argument. The short version of events is that the city is attempting to condemn an older residential neighborhood in

Stacy McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01090350065017641343noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10726894.post-1109687584411138902005-03-01T09:29:00.000-05:002005-03-01T09:33:04.413-05:00

Michael Kinsley expresses his opinion that the real estate market is in a bubble that's likely to pop any day now. Maybe. Well, who knows really?It is obvious to me that today's real estate prices are a speculative bubble that is bound to burst. Of course, this has been obvious to me for about three decades and wrong almost all of that time.Points for clever CYA. Of course, it's hard not to

Stacy McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01090350065017641343noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10726894.post-1109365580811100932005-02-25T15:48:00.000-05:002005-02-25T16:06:20.813-05:00

A lot of people bag on zoning as a major culprit in sprawl. What many of them either don't realize or take for granted is that in its early days (c.WWI) it was a major land use reform. Zoning prevented nuisance or polluting activites from taking place near residential housing (and vice versa), stabilizing the market value of land earmarked for each, and went a long way to protecting people from

Stacy McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01090350065017641343noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10726894.post-1109356075510753792005-02-25T13:24:00.000-05:002005-02-25T13:27:55.513-05:00

I’d like to get some comments on planning for growth in a rural, small (i.e., wide-spot-in-the-road) town. Our town went through 200 years of a 6-fold population growth, shrinkage and regrowth, characterized by agricultural and then industrial development and abandonment. The now-departed agriculture and industry brought about significant changes in the landscape. The result is a

Terry McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08343733254257564186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10726894.post-1109267364999983252005-02-24T12:20:00.000-05:002005-02-24T12:49:25.003-05:00

Raise the Hammer has a commonsense editorial on the state of planning in Canada's Great Lakes region; it may as well apply to anywhere in the US. ...cities since the early twentieth century seem to have forgotten that growth (increasing the size of economic activity) and development (increasing the density and complexity of economic activity) occurred naturally throughout most of history without

Stacy McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01090350065017641343noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10726894.post-1109170284576744952005-02-23T09:51:00.000-05:002005-02-23T09:59:01.933-05:00

Raise The Hammer attempts to get Crazy Jim Kunstler's opinion on Hamilton, Ontario's new "green belt" urban growth boundary. You'll have to look elsewhere for actual discussion of the boundary; what we get here is Kunstler's vision of the future, and you'll want to make sure your overalls and garden implements are in good condition.The salient fact about the decades ahead is that we are entering

Stacy McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01090350065017641343noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10726894.post-1109104131173397372005-02-22T14:56:00.000-05:002005-02-22T15:28:51.176-05:00

Reading about the Fort Trumbull eminent domain lawsuit here and here. There are a lot of issues tied up in something like this. For most homeowners, their house and lot are their primary--often their only--financial investment. As far back as the depression era, presidents from Hoover on the right to FDR on the left extolled the virtues of "a nation of homeowners" and passed sweeping measures

Stacy McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01090350065017641343noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10726894.post-1109097211617997132005-02-22T12:43:00.000-05:002005-02-22T13:41:11.503-05:00

It turns out Alexandria has its own example of this phenomenon. According to the public/private Alexandria Economic Development Partnership, the Arlandria neighborhood (located, of course, on the city limits between ARLington and AlexANDRIA) is known to the locals as "Chirilagua", after the Salvadoran town some of them, perhaps, hail from. Is this mainly marketing-speak? Urban Mozaik reports, you

Stacy McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01090350065017641343noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10726894.post-1108571027509254282005-02-16T11:23:00.000-05:002005-02-16T11:27:16.620-05:00

Via APA, USA Today says hispanic Americans like new urbanism for cultural reasons:Advocates of this budding movement suggest that places where Hispanics are fast becoming the majority could help rein in sprawl by capitalizing on Latino cultural preferences for compact neighborhoods, large public places and a sense of community."I grew up in Mexico. We had a traditional urban square and plaza

Stacy McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01090350065017641343noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10726894.post-1109097357817276202005-02-13T11:20:00.001-05:002005-02-22T13:39:36.533-05:00

The Post reports that DC area commuters spend an average of 30 minutes commuting each way (about 10% above the national average -that's a noticeable difference added up over the entire year) but still see Metro as inconvenient. "Metro is widely admired but largely bypassed" essentially because of a vague feeling that it's even worse than sitting in traffic. They're not totally wrong. I did an

Stacy McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01090350065017641343noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10726894.post-1108071713534582952005-02-10T16:22:00.000-05:002005-02-10T16:41:53.533-05:00

John Kelly's column in today's Post includes a blurb about the Metro's humble beginnings. I'm 29, and for me the system has always been part of the urban landscape. As a kid, one of my favorite parts of the summer was always the day my mom would take some friends and I downtown on the subway. We'd be fascinated by the lights in the tunnel passing by--at maybe 50mph, but it felt like 100. Hard to

Stacy McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01090350065017641343noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10726894.post-1107973349660808162005-02-09T13:22:00.000-05:002007-01-16T14:08:06.013-05:00

In Michael Crichton's Timeline (the excellent novel, not the painful movie) a group of anthropology grad students sit in a cafe in rural France, explaining their architectural dig to a friend who works in a different profession. They note that the picturesque 12th-century village, which consisted of little more than a market square, tradesmen's shops (blacksmith, farrier, and soforth) and a

Stacy McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01090350065017641343noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10726894.post-1107970172387993822005-02-09T12:29:00.000-05:002005-02-09T12:36:41.280-05:00

Alexandria city officials have announced that real estate assessments (washingtonpost.com) are up 21% over the past year. Ouch. "The unprecedented increase in Alexandria home values is attributable to low interest rates, continued job growth in the region and the city's desirable location close to Washington, city officials said."And they have supporting data for that conclusion. Broadly,

Stacy McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01090350065017641343noreply@blogger.com0