Disqus - Latest Comments for mlinksva

Re: Detroit Considers Changing its Property Tax System to No Longer Punish Investments

mlinksva — Sun, 12 Mar 2023 15:46:28 -0000

Really exciting development, thanks for this article. Hope split rate gets implemented by Detroit, and successfully, so that others copy.

One quibble: "So in 1923, the cities of Pittsburgh and Scranton adopted a tax system where land was valued higher than the buildings upon it. Once property owners were no longer punished for building on or improving property, these cities began to grow again."

Those cities, like their peers, were growing rapidly through the 1920s, with a bit of slowdown during the great depression, then depopulation getting into full swing in the 1950s. Threre's a compelling story here, but it isn't as simple as presented.

Re: Legislative Update: Bill to Remove Parking Minimums Near Transit Passes First Committee

mlinksva — Sat, 17 Apr 2021 19:42:27 -0000

> some even built more parking than they would have otherwise.

Is there any evidence for this -- that single use developers built more parking than they would have had parking requirements remained, i.e., "otherwise" -- whatsoever? They built more parking than they would have been required to previously, as they surely would have had parking requirements remained in place in Buffalo. Elimination of parking requirements should be expected to have no effect where developers want to build more than requirements say.

Re: Neglected Concrete in Your Neighborhood? Why Not Depave It?

mlinksva — Sat, 04 May 2019 15:06:29 -0000

www.depave.org should be depave.org (without www.) in show notes -- former obtains an error.

Good show and initiatives! Would pair well with -- could be funded by -- an impermeable surface fee.

Re: Does Merging With its Suburbs Make St. Louis a Strong Town?

mlinksva — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 18:48:11 -0000

If the great divorce was a historic bad bet by the city in 1876, I'd bet that consolidation that includes the city in 2019 is another bad bet by the city. Pursuit of the county strikes me as a gimmick somewhat like pursuit of headquarters and stadiums. Pursue strong town policies instead and the city has massive upside which it should not delay and dilute to the satisfaction and benefit of the county.

Re: How to Translate Your Ideas into Data-Driven Action

mlinksva — Sun, 10 Feb 2019 23:00:12 -0000

https://github.com/opendenton is the GitHub organization mentioned at around 30 minutes.

Re: Strong Towns Helps Change the Planning Paradigm in Sacramento

mlinksva — Sat, 19 Jan 2019 20:35:34 -0000

Some other mentions in the Sacramento conversation https://gettingaroundsac.bl...

Re: Amazon HQ2: Really, New York?

mlinksva — Mon, 03 Dec 2018 19:01:52 -0000

NYS and NYC do lots of corporate welfare, there's nothing surprising about Amazon HQ2 being a major recipient. I'm incredulous at the incredulity on display in the podcast. :) One reference: https://www.goodjobsfirst.o...

There has to be a federal solution. https://www.theatlantic.com... outlines 3 possibilities: ban, tax, or withhold federal funding.

There have also been occasional attempts to rein in similar handouts to film studios and sports teams, a few linked in https://gondwanaland.com/ml...

Re: Social Media Lessons

mlinksva — Sat, 17 Nov 2018 02:53:10 -0000

Anonymous rumor-mongering doesn't strike me as low status. It does strike me as the type of application expected by early net users. Posting evidence of one's own extremely low status tastes and self-harming activities already seems rampant, lower status, and contrary to the expectations of early net users for net applications to do something interesting with the net's new capabilities. I guess we will see more of the same, maybe culminating with masses proudly reposting suicide cult leader images (I doubt this is a bigger threat than competing governments, but one way to try to make sense the claim it is).

Re: What Housing Vouchers Can And Can't Do

mlinksva — Sun, 29 Apr 2018 15:18:43 -0000

Added: Question was on my mind in part because of recent papers showing mortgage interest deduction https://acawiki.org/Implica... and property tax limitation https://acawiki.org/Proposi... increase prices and harms overall welfare. I had completely forgotten another recent paper https://acawiki.org/Low_Hom... that in part claims social housing in Germany increases demand, and thus prices. That's a bit counter-intuitive to me, maybe explaining why I forgot! I'll have to re-read the paper, but I imagine one way to make sense of it might be to consider public/social housing production and consumption separately: production is presumably subsidized, but once built, consumption is subsidized.

Re: What Housing Vouchers Can And Can't Do

mlinksva — Fri, 27 Apr 2018 12:55:31 -0000

I'd love to read about the effects of each of these four forms of housing subsidy on market prices. Abstractly, I imagine the first two (public housing, LIHTC) would decrease market prices because they are supply subsidies while the latter two (rent control, vouchers) would increase market prices because they are demand subsidies. But I have no idea of the magnitudes or if there are details of any of the forms that might cause the direction to flip.

I wish a fifth kind of "subsidy" was also included: regulation, from by-right permitting to eliminating parking, setback, and lot size requirements to mandating zero parking to allowing ADUs, apartments, dorms, mobile homes, and other cheaper forms of housing.

Re: Why Development-Oriented Transit is better than Transit-Oriented Development

mlinksva — Fri, 27 Apr 2018 12:22:05 -0000

> Some communities

Are you referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wi... or something else or in addition? Would love to read about specific examples I don't know about.

Re: Why Development-Oriented Transit is better than Transit-Oriented Development

mlinksva — Thu, 26 Apr 2018 22:08:14 -0000

> With [TOD], a rail line is built out to a less populated area, then large, mixed-use residences and businesses are constructed in close proximity to that rail stop.

I've never heard/read of TOD referring only to outlying development before. The examples in https://en.wikipedia.org/wi... seem to include both infill and distant greenfield situations, and that's what I recall locally (SF bay area) as well, e.g., https://www.bart.gov/about/... includes both very urban and very exurban stations ... in the area many highly desirable and old areas with excellent transit are woefully under-utilized (eg huge parking lot and mostly single unit residences immediately surrounding North Berkeley BART) and filling in of those areas is called TOD.

Re: A Small Town Mayor Puts Strong Towns Principles into Action

mlinksva — Tue, 17 Apr 2018 20:56:04 -0000

Looked up a map. The Wal-Mart is out of town on "Million Dollar Highway". No doubt it actually cost a lot more. :-/

Still this is a great story. I love reading about officials of any size settlement learning and doing strong towns and related principles and practices!

Re: The Inequity of Pedestrian Deaths

mlinksva — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 21:35:40 -0000

It's getting old (2008-2012 data) but http://www.governing.com/go... and linked analysis shows similar patterns across U.S., though for St Louis the north south difference in pedestrian fatalities isn't as stark as the 2013-2018 map shown above. Did the south side of St Louis make some pedestrian safety improvements over the past 5 years or so? Of course in either map the difference is even more stark based on population, since the north side has lost more population than the south.

Re: Suburban Redevelopment Requires Patience, Engagement and a Positive Attitude

mlinksva — Sat, 31 Mar 2018 16:24:41 -0000

Anyone know the geolocation of the image/plan? I found the FB discussion at https://www.facebook.com/ma... but didn't notice the location mentioned. In the podcast Bob Barber says it is near the center of whatever town it is in.

I was kind of disappointed to not read or hear (admittedly I listened at 2x and didn't expand every comment subthread -- very happy to have missed and would love to be corrected) any "doing the math" on this project. Is it profitable without new subsidies? If so, more power to whatever town it is in and the developers! If it took subsidies that could have been spent improving a less insanely auto-oriented place, that's unfortunate.

Re: Tuesday: Slowing down traffic and increasing safety along St. Louis streets

mlinksva — Sun, 25 Mar 2018 21:05:11 -0000

How hard is it to understand that allowing fallible humans to move huge chunks of metal at high speeds through the street is a bad idea? The balls here are one very simple, not overthought mitigation of the previous bad idea.

Re: A Naturally Bike-Friendly Town

mlinksva — Mon, 19 Mar 2018 18:45:41 -0000

Neat. Approximately 3x the population of Millbrook, NY https://www.strongtowns.org... and also looking at the map, doesn't have an auto-oriented strip development on its outskirts (I do see a casino, but nothing else so I don't think that counts as a strip).

Re: Two Pedestrian Safety Campaigns That Make Some Sense

mlinksva — Sun, 04 Mar 2018 16:00:58 -0000

Those two (design and enforcement) aren't mutually exclusive, nor are they exhaustive, nor is the violence of car users limited to crashes. It also includes several forms of pollution, for which the appropriate response in some cases will be banning (e.g., leaded gas, and eventually human drivers), regulating (e.g., stricter requirements for a license), and taxing (e.g., gas, VMT, parking, congestion). The last (tax) is by far my favorite, but I'll take progress on any and all!

Re: SPUR Talk: A Very Ferry Future for the Bay Area?

mlinksva — Sun, 04 Mar 2018 14:55:21 -0000

I suppose not. Though just to my eye (as a regular transbay bus rider) buses are a tiny contributor to congestion, except *possibly* in the block right around the SF transbay terminal (but it that block doesn't strike me as being very congested, and bus ingress/egress seems smooth). Even in the routes between the terminal and the bridge, it looks to me like the problem is cars. More buses are part of the solution, not the problem. Best paired with higher bridge tolls and a greater downtown SF congestion charge and elimination of gratis parking anywhere near downtown (eg it's absurd that there are non-metered spaces anywhere on Beale).

More ferries might make sense on their own merits. But at this point I'm unconvinced that more ferries would be better than more buses *due to buses contributing to bridge congestion*. Of course I'd be happy to see data to the contrary. I did a quick search and found http://tjpa.org/uploads/201... which said AM peak is 9200 cars/hours and 100 buses. Of course buses are bigger than cars, but that ratio strikes me as matching what my eyes see. Cars are the problem.

Re: SPUR Talk: A Very Ferry Future for the Bay Area?

mlinksva — Sun, 25 Feb 2018 16:08:22 -0000

Forget those suburban outposts. For reducing need for transbay trips (where ferries are relevant), downtown Oakland is the only place relevant, and has vast capacity for more jobs.

Re: SPUR Talk: A Very Ferry Future for the Bay Area?

mlinksva — Sun, 25 Feb 2018 16:03:53 -0000

Why have an empty Ferry going back to the East Bay...?

I have no opinion one way or another about ferries but I don't follow how they are less subject to being mostly empty on reverse commute than any other mode. What am I missing?

Re: Strong Towns Stands up for Main Street

mlinksva — Fri, 16 Feb 2018 14:40:26 -0000

Impressive. Burgum's site includes https://dougburgum.com/main...

> Simply put, one of the major determinants of cost for a city or community is linear feet. The more linear feet, the greater the cost of everything.

Re: Texting in Your Risk Gap

mlinksva — Fri, 02 Feb 2018 20:08:18 -0000

Losing a privilege that can kill other people doesn't seem disproportionate, not remotely like killing drug dealers. For better or (yes, usually) worse, disproportionate punishment can be wildly popular, if people hate the thing being punished. Sure, losing driving privilege will feel like a terrible punishment because people don't hate drivers. Unfortunate, but I acknowledge that reality for now.

I shouldn't have suggested an e.g., that will be perceived as harsh. What I really wanted to highlight is opportunity to actually increase risk, regardless of what behavior or attribute is the cause, since perceived risk from the driving environment isn't going to be re-designed into every mile of street and road, and people can be killed by drivers on every mile.

How about a wealth-based fine, not based on behavior (eg texting or speeding), but actually getting in an accident. Start at $5, but a billionaire would pay millions.

Re: Texting in Your Risk Gap

mlinksva — Thu, 01 Feb 2018 18:11:06 -0000

I'm all for making streets and roads feel more dangerous so that drivers take less risk. But most won't have major design changes implemented anytime soon if ever. From the other side, risk of bearing significant costs should be increased -- e.g., get in an accident, lose your license permanently. It doesn't matter if you were sleepy, texting, drunk, or "unlucky". This doesn't have the problem of e.g., grooming displacing texting if texting is cracked down on.

Re: Toward Better Signals

mlinksva — Tue, 30 Jan 2018 15:57:02 -0000

Or, taxed. Tax ads. That would be a tax on many kinds of social media, and a tax on another kind of signaling.