The Handbuilt City

Travel Urban Planning 

Los Angeles Trip: In the Popular Imagination

February 19, 2020February 20, 2020 Nat Zorach 0 Comments apocalyptic fiction, california water wars, channelization, dexter, dystopian fiction, flood control, LA, los angeles, los angeles aqueduct, los angeles river, miami, michael c. hall, six feet under, william mulholland

It’s always interesting to trace the origins of our first imagined memories of unfamiliar places. Stereotypes abound– often unfortunate and

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Urban Planning 

YouLam No. 3 – Combat Midwinter Malaise With Good Journalism!

February 19, 2020February 15, 2020 Nat Zorach 0 Comments affordable housing, american society of adaptation professionals, climate leadership conference, coronavirus, Donald Trump, hennessy, housing, jeff bezos, lloyd blankfein, los angeles, minoru yamasaki, neoclassical architecture, prop hhh, startingbloc, trump, youlam

After a long stretch of tepid gloom, winter has hit like the gabbagool. It’s the latest YouLam. Here’s the news:

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Mobility Transit infrastructure Urban Planning 

Transportation Bonanza 11: The Rural, The Urban, And The MDOT

February 17, 2020February 20, 2020 Nat Zorach 0 Comments conferences, field trips, green stormwater infrastructure, lansing, mdot, michigan, mobility, planning, stormwater, transit, transportation, transportation engineering, transportation planning, Urban planning

Nat takes a snowy Thursday trip to the capital to attend the Transportation Bonanza in Lansing with other planners, engineers, and nerds.

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Michigan Transit infrastructure 

It’s Not Infrastructure If It’s Just Roads

February 14, 2020February 14, 2020 Nat Zorach 0 Comments brian calley, Bridge Magazine, gas tax, Gretchen Whitmer, HOV lanes, infrastructure, lee chatfield, matt maddock, michigan, mike shirkey, NUMTOT, public finance, road funding, roads, Sprawl, tolls, transit, transit infrastructure, UN Agenda 21 Globalist Conspiracy, user fees, VMT tax

I spoke with Brian Calley on proposals to fix the damn roads– and to understand whether Republicans might consider transit a good complement.

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Business & Economics 

“Bernie Sanders Will Ruin The Economy,” Says Guy Who Broke The Economy

February 12, 2020February 12, 2020 Nat Zorach 0 Comments bernie sanders, communism, democratic socialism, goldman sachs, lloyd blankfein, Marxism, mortgage crisis, socialism, wall street

Will somebody please buy Lloyd Blankfein a teddy bear, or something? I mean, sheesh.

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Public transit Transit infrastructure Urban Planning 

Lessons from Tampa: How Transit Funding Works

February 12, 2020February 10, 2020 Nat Zorach 0 Comments capital expenditures, gas tax, local option sales tax, millage, property tax, sales tax, transit, transit funding

Transit funding is a messy topic. This article is a brief primer exploring benefits and drawbacks of various sources.

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Michigan Public transit Transit infrastructure 

RTA Bus vs. a Train Between Ann Arbor and Detroit? (Part 2)

February 11, 2020February 11, 2020 Nat Zorach 0 Comments amtrak, ann arbor, canadian national, canadian pacific, class i railroads, conrail, DDOT, Detroit, farebox recovery ratio, hiawatha, I-75, m-10, marc magliari, mike hicks, milwaukee, rail, RTA, southeast michigan, university of michigan

One of my readers observed that she was a bit bummed out by the “yeah, but it simply can’t work

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Environment Photography 

Travels and Travails in the Downriver Smog

February 10, 2020February 9, 2020 Nat Zorach 0 Comments allen park, arcelor mittal, capitalization, delray, Detroit, downriver, DTE Energy, ESG, krispy kreme, lincoln park, marathon petroleum, marathon refinery, MPC, nucor, rashida tlaib, river rouge, rouge river, violations, X, Zug Island

US Steel’s closure of its two Downriver plants raise the question of the future of the polluted areas around the x217 and x219 ZIP codes.

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Business & Economics Culture & Language YouLam 

YouLam No. 2 – February 2020

February 10, 2020February 11, 2020 Nat Zorach 0 Comments black history month, civil rights, coronavirus, current events, detroit regional chamber, Donald Trump, global economy, michigan, news, ontario, pennsylvania, rockvale square, state of transit, stock market, thurgood marshall, transportation riders united, w.e.b. dubois, youlam

Happy February. It is Black History Month! It’s also Leap Year, which means we have the opportunity to enjoy 3.6%

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Events 

StartingBloc: Learning Generosity at Hunt Street Station

February 6, 2020February 8, 2020 Nat Zorach 0 Comments aaron mondry, atomic chicken, clinton school, CRIO, curbed, curbed detroit, detroit regional chamber, events, godwin ihentuge, gratiot avenue, hunt street station, katherine brown, martha cavazos, motor city muckracker, new center, startingbloc, steve neavling, woodward avenue, yumvillage

In a couple of weeks, I’ll be attending the StartingBloc Institute in Los Angeles. A preview was offered last night

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