The Charleston Block looks an awful lot like the development that our 40R proposal is envisioning. We certainly need more housing, and this seems like the correct solution for the stroad section of town.
People need to be engaged and sold on the vision, which really shouldn’t be difficult when you show them a picture of a stroad next to a picture of a town full of butchers and bakers and people smiling. Where I am, people are disenfranchised from the process, because the process is sending around a 600 page document a week before the vote on the new 20 year unified development ordinance plan from which they will derive zoning designations. Furthermore, those who ARE interested fall into the category of Greedy developers, who are instantly either fighting or figuring ways to circumvent the healthy vision, Planners, who are former idealists who now have kids that are college-age and have been battling said developers for years if not decades and maybe have even decided to join them since they talk on the phone every day anyway and are friends now, and politicians, who basically need to appear agree with everyone to get re-elected. Pols should be engaging the public but again, that gets tiresome and they have families too & it becomes easier to finance their next campaign by agreeing with developers if they find a way to not appear to do it at community events. We live in a much larger, and extremely rapidly growing, town, however. There are people who would be engaged with this if they had the capital to play as mini-developers, but careful who we recruit for that because their goal may actually be the same as “greedy developers,” especially if they are not investing in their own area. Check out the StoneHunt case in Cherry, if you haven’t already. Many differences, of course, but the feature I’m spotlighting with that is that one of the would-be developers STILL LIVES in the community. Completely ostracized by those he screwed over.
So the more “neighbor developers” you initiate, the more neighbor disputes potentially arise, may be the point there. But that’s just life. At least there’s a face to be mad at, instead of a corporation filed in Delaware
Also you’re a really good writer and this translates some potentially boring but important ideas (zoning stuff tends to zone some people out) into more concrete ideas. The more humor the better
I love the term thick but will the targeted fence-sitters reading this respond to it the same way? That’s more of a lighthearted musing than aggressive condemnation. Also I’m learning this app & practicing comments. Now I’m gonna brainstorm Synonyms healthy, resilient, leafy, diverse, crowded, interwoven, stacked, consolidated, Nearer, ok, I get it, it’s hard. And I’m thick
Thanks for the comments! Following the lead of Daniel Herriges at Strong Towns, I'm using "thick" to describe having more households per lot and avoiding the term "density," which can have a lot of meanings depending on your vantage point and can be unnecessarily political and misleading. I think some of those synonyms could be useful, depending on what you're wanting to emphasize.
The Charleston Block looks an awful lot like the development that our 40R proposal is envisioning. We certainly need more housing, and this seems like the correct solution for the stroad section of town.
People need to be engaged and sold on the vision, which really shouldn’t be difficult when you show them a picture of a stroad next to a picture of a town full of butchers and bakers and people smiling. Where I am, people are disenfranchised from the process, because the process is sending around a 600 page document a week before the vote on the new 20 year unified development ordinance plan from which they will derive zoning designations. Furthermore, those who ARE interested fall into the category of Greedy developers, who are instantly either fighting or figuring ways to circumvent the healthy vision, Planners, who are former idealists who now have kids that are college-age and have been battling said developers for years if not decades and maybe have even decided to join them since they talk on the phone every day anyway and are friends now, and politicians, who basically need to appear agree with everyone to get re-elected. Pols should be engaging the public but again, that gets tiresome and they have families too & it becomes easier to finance their next campaign by agreeing with developers if they find a way to not appear to do it at community events. We live in a much larger, and extremely rapidly growing, town, however. There are people who would be engaged with this if they had the capital to play as mini-developers, but careful who we recruit for that because their goal may actually be the same as “greedy developers,” especially if they are not investing in their own area. Check out the StoneHunt case in Cherry, if you haven’t already. Many differences, of course, but the feature I’m spotlighting with that is that one of the would-be developers STILL LIVES in the community. Completely ostracized by those he screwed over.
So the more “neighbor developers” you initiate, the more neighbor disputes potentially arise, may be the point there. But that’s just life. At least there’s a face to be mad at, instead of a corporation filed in Delaware
The hyperlinks are super helpful. I just read Marohn’s article and studied the map for the 40R overlays.
Also you’re a really good writer and this translates some potentially boring but important ideas (zoning stuff tends to zone some people out) into more concrete ideas. The more humor the better
I love the term thick but will the targeted fence-sitters reading this respond to it the same way? That’s more of a lighthearted musing than aggressive condemnation. Also I’m learning this app & practicing comments. Now I’m gonna brainstorm Synonyms healthy, resilient, leafy, diverse, crowded, interwoven, stacked, consolidated, Nearer, ok, I get it, it’s hard. And I’m thick
Thanks for the comments! Following the lead of Daniel Herriges at Strong Towns, I'm using "thick" to describe having more households per lot and avoiding the term "density," which can have a lot of meanings depending on your vantage point and can be unnecessarily political and misleading. I think some of those synonyms could be useful, depending on what you're wanting to emphasize.