Comments for Urban ethics and theory

Comment on Ken Orski on the administration’s re-elect me-centered transportation proposal by Frank Popper

Frank Popper — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:52:08 +0000

gee, lisa, as a land-use person, i have this prollem permanently. at least you’ve got legislation and budgets to talk about. i’d have to talk about how the republicans, the inheritors of theodore roosevelt, are making utter fools of themselves about one of his largest legacies, the federal public lands. two weeks ago mrom mused in public that he doesn’t know why we have them, and rpaul advocated selling them all off to private interests. it’s hard to know which position is more demagogic. mrom went to college in utah, a big public-lands state, and ran the 2002 utah winter olympics, which largely took place on public lands. (plus the idea of mrom musing about anything in public sounds phony right there.) rpaul must know or know of homesteader families and their descendants who could briefly fill him in on the folly of selling off 1.2 million square miles *in the middle of a housing recession.* all in all, by comparison you’ve got it easy

Comment on The Bankrupt County and the Future of Chapter 9 by drschweitzer

drschweitzer — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 15:40:36 +0000

It’s on inlet in the Bay Area. That’s hardly a hardscrabble, dust-dry town in the Central Valley. I guess if you only think of coastal California as Malibu and San Diego, you’re right. The point about it being on the water means that there are real possibilities for redevelopment.

Comment on The Bankrupt County and the Future of Chapter 9 by Frank Popper

Frank Popper — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 14:26:31 +0000

it’s kind of stretch to call vallejo coastal, no? coastal california conveys an image to the rest of the country and the rest of california. vallejo (i’ve been there) doesn’t fit it. yes, the town’s on water, and there must be some nicer parts, but it’s few people’s notion of coastal cal

Comment on Help out my undergraduate developers? by dave.andersen4@gmail.com

dave.andersen4@gmail.com — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 04:26:58 +0000

Isla Macaco – If you’re into yachting and have lots of money. If that’s your market, OK.
Vulgaria – Your page did not load. Web marketing has no room for bad code. Hope your idea is good. Wish I could see it.

El Paraiso – This gets my vote. It looks interesting and also looks scalable and not like so much BS.

Costa Verde – Go read Jane Jacobs again
The Perfect City

These last two look boring and derivative. How are these different from Cabo, other than they are not built yet. zzzzzz

p.s. listen to your prof. She’s one of the smartest people I know

Comment on Two picks from JUA suggesting that suburbs aren’t what planners think they are by Peter McFerrin (@PMcFerrin)

Peter McFerrin (@PMcFerrin) — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 17:07:57 +0000

The abstract for the first paper got repeated. I take it the second one is about black folks moving to Palmdale?

Comment on The LA Times sets a new low for Op-Eds by Peter McFerrin (@PMcFerrin)

Peter McFerrin (@PMcFerrin) — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 16:50:39 +0000

I’m not sure if a single word Charlotte Allen has ever written is of any worth to anyone.

Comment on The LA Times sets a new low for Op-Eds by Jesse Richardson

Jesse Richardson — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 16:45:27 +0000

These pieces are definitely vapid, but a new low? You obviously haven’t read the Roanoke Times. You are better off for that.

Comment on Doig on the TEA party and a “war on transit” in Salon.com by Jesse Richardson

Jesse Richardson — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 16:52:07 +0000

I agree, Lisa. Doig sounds like a whiner in this piece. And as far as the poor urban dwellers being neglected, maybe the rhetoric focuses on the great rural dwellers as the salt of the earth. However, federal policy ignores the rural poor. I invite Doig to move to a rural area and start whining about mass transit.

Comment on The anti-federalist case for transit funding by academicpolemic

academicpolemic — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 01:19:13 +0000

On the other hand, the federal government is further removed from the nitty gritty of local and regional transportation decisions so it seems to me the ideal place to push for projects that are locally/regionally unpopular but meet broader goals like climate change mitigation, livability, and equity. The FTA has been great recently in pushing the envelope on setting standards on its grantees for equity analyses of plans, projects, and programs (e.g., Oakland Airport Connector, updates to EJ and Title VI circulars). If you remove the federal role, you remove this strong force.

Also, since state DOTs have been systematically disempowered over the past several decades in favor of MPOs, if we devolve the tax to them, we’d potentially end up with even stronger “regions,” which are themselves composed of locals. I’m not sure I trust them to enact policy that’s in the state’s (and surely not the nation’s) interest.

Comment on This week’s readings in the Urban Context by Frank Popper

Frank Popper — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 01:10:21 +0000

On African cities you might want to look at Ryszard Kapuscinski’s brilliant “The Shadow of the Sun,” not to be confused with the Bruce Willis African movie with the same name. RK makes the argument you mention about how the cities’ seeming confusion masks organization and often high functioning, except that he ups the ante: he says that in their operation they often outperform First World cities, esp. considering how cheap they are to build using only the materials of the poor. RK is also a spectacular writer who deserves even now to be better known.