Payton Chung 🏳️🌈
@westnorth.com
Card-carrying urbanist since 1998; housing developer, author, museum docent, board member, #climate voter. Opine solely for myself. Ex-CHI, BOS, RDU 🚄🚋🚴♂️🌇🏗️🚰🏳️🌈 Words @ggwash.org @citybuilder.bsky.social
🔵 This week's Tom the Dancing Bug comic - 🇺🇸 THE TOP-SECRET TRUTH ABOUT TRUMP AND THE REFLECTING POOL - Brought to you by the patriotic Inner Hive, including long-time member Leo MT and new member EvilTwin1955. Join us at bit.ly/theInnerHive - Read it right here👇
Felt like local online DC news was dying with death again of DCist and the evisceration of Post Local. But now we have NOTUS, The 51st, City Cast DC, Axios etc in addition to Washingtonian and Post still doing good reporting and as a consumer seems a lot more to track/follow??
The OG Levittown houses were also 750 sq ft 2BRs.
California YIMBY@cayimby.bsky.social · 3d agoCalifornia's first standalone ADU sold as its own home for $530,000 — in a city where median home prices top $2 million. A 2023 law made this legal. It shows how small changes to existing rules can open a cheaper path to ownership. www.sfgate.com/realestate/a...
Here's Victor Hugo in Notre Dame de Paris describing how the grandeur of Gothic Paris has been defaced by the second-rate architecture of the Invalides and the Pantheon.
The only way we are going to solve California’s housing shortage is by having every city in the state “rubber stamp” unremarkable new apartment buildings and townhomes.
David Pollack@davidmpollack.bsky.social · 2d agoIf you reduce the barriers to entry for building, more local, small developers would invest in architecture for personal, subjective reasons and there would be fewer mediocre hot takes on design. www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/open...
I have a half formed theory about how the decline of all transportation modes in favour of the car was akin to the introduction of an new species in a untouched ecosystem, making it invasive. The car isn't better per se, but it made all other modes worse and the technological antibodies didn't exist
This 1899 political cartoon is an example of how urban Americans (in this case, New Yorkers) viewed the transit companies at the time.
Jake Berman@lostsubways.com · 3d agothese monopolies were hilariously corrupt as well, and they had few friends. henry huntington (of LA's red cars), or charles yerkes (of the chicago eleveated) were as detested as bezos and zuckerberg were today. 4/
A 15-story garage "would make the parking deck taller than the main terminal... likely block most views of the historic terminal." The rail platform is where it is precisely because under federal law (Section 4f) it couldn't block the "historic" parking lot view.
Martin Austermuhle@maustermuhle.bsky.social · 2d agoOne part of Trump's $22 billion makeover of Dulles that's been missed is his big, beautiful, world-record 32,000-spot parking garage. That's *way* more parking than recent estimates show the airport needs, and it would tower over the historic terminal: www.notus.org/metro/dulles...
The story of Kid Cann and the Minneapolis mob is, I think, ultimately sad, with its roots in the city's history as home to some of the most oppressive antisemitism in 19th century America—which is saying something—but he really did team up with Wall Street to fuck public transit for cash.
Jake Berman@lostsubways.com · 3d agoThere was, however, one exception to this: Minneapolis-St Paul. There, a finance bro, the mob, and a crooked lawyer really did buy the trains and sell them for scrap - but that was the exception, not the rule. 12/12
One small reason why I give tours at the Baltimore Streetcar Museum* is that Baltimore was one of NCL's 44 cities. Saying "we had cute trolleys like the one you're riding, GM killed them, the end" is a very quick and tidy story, and in Baltimore, it's true!
David Ho@davidho.bsky.social · 3d agoIs everyone aware of the General Motors streetcar conspiracy? In the mid-20th century, auto and oil interests bought up electric streetcar systems across the US and systematically replaced them with bus routes and paved roads, funneling commuters toward private cars.
Exelon thinks that almost half of the projected data center load growth in its territory* will never be built www.utilitydive.com/news/exelon-... * incl Chicago, Philly, Baltimore, DC
Exelon ‘high probability’ data center load falls 40%
The drop to 11 GW reflects Exelon’s ability to weed out speculative projects through “transmission service agreements,” said CFO Jeanne Jones.
utilitydive.com
not enough, i propose micro-gentrification, which allows us to hold discourse around smaller acts of gentrification, like picking up the clothes in your room, throwing away trash instead of piling it up in a corner, and using any odor removing products (candles, febreeze, ect)
Neil Flanagan 🧱🗃️@jgbollard.bsky.social · 4d agoThis is it boys, the platonic "New York can never get better" piece www.archpaper.com/2026/07/litt...
Read this blog post for a short, simple introduction to "the 4X rule." It has a critical impact on residential redevelopment, and even more so on affordability and affordable housing.
Payton Chung 🏳️🌈@westnorth.com · 5d agoLife is messy. So is redevelopment. In "a successful city district", "Some of the old buildings, year by year, are replaced by new ones - or rehabilitated to a degree equivalent to replacement. Over the years there is, therefore, constantly a mixture of buildings of many ages and types. This is,…
Life is messy. So is redevelopment. In "a successful city district", "Some of the old buildings, year by year, are replaced by new ones - or rehabilitated to a degree equivalent to replacement. Over the years there is, therefore, constantly a mixture of buildings of many ages and types. This is,…
Life is messy. So is redevelopment.
In "a successful city district", "Some of the old buildings, year by year, are replaced by new ones - or rehabilitated to a degree equivalent to replacement. Over the years there is, therefore, constantly a mixture of buildings of many ages and types. This is, of course, a dynamic process, with what was once new in the mixture eventually becoming what is old in the mixture." Jane Jacobs, …
westnorth.com
Recently learned that the standard contract for Catholic church land sales prohibits alcohol sales for 50 years. So how does Baltimore have a church brewery? It was owned by an order, which relented after not finding any other willing buyers catholicreview.org/how-st-micha...
How St. Michael the Archangel became the Ministry of Brewing - Catholic Review
How did one of Baltimore’s most historic Catholic churches – built in 1852 to serve German immigrants and once led by St. John Neumann – become a brewery?
catholicreview.org
When you look at actual world-class transit cities like London, Paris, Singapore, and Tokyo — None of them have free fares. All of them have an extensive network of trains and buses with some combination of speed, frequency, reliability, etc.
Mayor Karen Bass@mayor.lacity.gov · 2w agoAs Chair, I’ll build a long-term financial plan to make Metro fare-free. I’ve fought for a world-class transit system my entire career because public transit should create opportunity for everyone.
Tens of millions of people voted for this three times, acting like he’s the absolute baddest man walking the earth, and he’s scared of museums
Phil Lewis@phillewis.bsky.social · 2w agoTrump has ordered that warning signs labeling the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History as 'inaccurate' be placed in front of the museum
I'd noticed that Canadian cities have a lot of slabby apartment blocks, but still surprised that Canada built more multifamily than single-family from 1963-1973 www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-63...
Rebekah Pierce, J&R Pierce Family Farm, on the argument that solar panels ruin land for crops: “Everything can be removed, even if the site isn’t being farmed around...Even if it’s not being farmed around, it can go back to being farmed in the future and it’s remained in that family’s name.”
Understanding the conversation around solar farming in New York
Not everyone agrees with the push to use New York’s farmland for solar farming.
spectrumlocalnews.com
"Family sized housing" scarce? Legalize rowhouses everywhere! e61.in/what-local-l... One suburb of Adelaide did. Building permits +67% "driven entirely by rowhouses… Movers into new housing were predominantly households in their prime family-formation years, upgrading out of cheaper rental housing"
What local land use reform does, and doesn’t, do – e61 INSTITUTE
e61.in
The whole point of exclusionary zoning is to raise housing prices. Turns out it raises rents for everyone, both rich and poor, resulting in housing insecurity and rent burden even in impoverished neighborhoods.
Payton Chung 🏳️🌈@westnorth.com · 2w ago"Exclusionary zoning is associated with higher median rents and higher shares of rent-burdened households in impoverished communities... higher housing prices as well as by a shortage of housing available to below-median income households throughout a metro area." read.dukeupress.edu/demography/a...
how did I end up on the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame press release list?
Apparently the economics now work for not just vegetables, but high value animal feed. Why grow Saudi camels' alfalfa in Arizona anyways? www.bizjournals.com/triangle/new...
Raleigh’s AgEye uses AI to transform food production from NC to the Middle East - Triangle Business Journal
Raleigh-based AgEye is betting that artificial intelligence can transform how food is grown.
bizjournals.com
Payton Chung 🏳️🌈@westnorth.com · 2y agoMost vegetables are now grown in places where (sun)light is free but water comparatively costly. As renewable energy gets cheaper + water pricier, vertical farming can change that equation. westnorth.com/2023/10/09/w...
Larry laid his mouse in front of the press to be photographed. Lest you ask, this is a real photograph via the Press Association.
