Hey guys, before I start this link list, I wanted to ask: Has anybody had trouble posting comments here with Disqus lately? Either you can’t post them, or once you do they disappear? I’ve gotten two complaints in the last few days, so if you’ve been experiencing any problems please don’t hesitate to let me know so I can try to get to the bottom of it. If you can’t post a comment, email me at smithsj[at]gmail[dot]com.
1. DC gets upzoned. Why the Washington City Paper chose to bury that behind items about “neighborhood branding” and “supporting the enactment of pending federal legislation to ensure that insurance reserves are held and invested in the U.S.” is beyond me.
2. DC has, unfortunately, also started to cap the number of cabs in the city. American politicians just can’t get enough of screwing over Somalis, I guess.
3. Jamaica, Queens gets downzoned. The Post tells us joyfully that the city is implementing the “innovative and critically important” FRESH initiative to deal with the area’s lack of supermarkets – which will be sorely needed now that the city is guaranteeing that there will be no new demand for food.
4. “Vertical parking lot” in Chicago, circa 1930.
5. Communism in America: Roosevelt Island.
6. Matt Yglesias and Megan McArdle discuss bars and clustering, but Ryan Advent has the best post in my opinion.
7. Chicago’s Metra boosts home values (duh).
9. One Tea Partier thinks that only property owners (read: homeowners) should be allowed to vote. “If you’re not a property owner, you know, I’m sorry but property owners have a little bit more of a vested interest in the community than non-property owners.”
Re: “Rezoning in on new Jamaica: City develops plan,” by Tom Topousis, “New York Post,” 11/30/10.
I grew up in semi-suburban / quasi-urban Jamaica, Queens (although in the Jamaica Hills area, rather than the Springfield Gardens part), and I think Jamaica overall offers some interesting object lessons on both the negatives and positives of suburban densification and market urbanism. As I see it, however, the negatives of densification and market urbanism are really mostly temporary or transitory — kind of like the cocoon stage between caterpillar and butterfly — or they would be really mostly temporary or transitory if we allowed ourselves to be guided by the precepts that have been suggested by Jane Jacobs in her seven major books, in particular her first one, “Death and Life of Great American Cities.” However, despite the fact that Jacobs is often cited by Amanda Burden and other planners, it seems to me that there is actually very little (almost none?) of the true (rather than mythical) Jacobs, unfortunately, in the plans that have been forwarded for Jamaica.
Benjamin Hemric
Wed., December 1, 2010, 12:55 a.m.
I like to think that Jacobs would have been aghast at the fact that some of her themes – “mixed primary uses” was decidedly out of vogue at the time and must have struck many as the way “old timey” cities used to function – were latched upon and twisted around by folks whose only motivation was to get the State to freeze time, and incidentally increase the value of their houses….