The Handbuilt City - Dispatches from the Rust Belt

Urban Planning Tech

NPC21: The Rapid Evolution of Virtual Conferencing

May 6, 2021May 6, 2021 Nat M. Zorach 0 Comments 2U, aicp, american planning association, apa, avocado toast, big dig, black-eyed susans, boston, city planners, coneflowers, conferences, consulting, consulting engineers, gen z, green stormwater infrastructure, GSI, katy shackelford, mail-order MBA, millennial, millennials, national planning conference, npc21, online MBA, parsons brinckerhoff, philadelphia, planners, stardew valley, tareq wafaie, urban planners, vacant lot management, vacant lots, viaduct, wsp, zoomer

Nat is attending the National Planning Conference “in” Boston this week, and reflecting on growth in the planning field alongside leaps and bounds in progress made in virtual conferencing.

Public Safety Infrastructure Small Business Streetscaping

New Grand River Streetscaping: Safer, Slower, Greener

May 4, 2021May 4, 2021 Nat M. Zorach 0 Comments bike lanes, black-owned business, crosswalk, crosswalks, Detroit, effect of streetscaping on public safety, garden stores, gardening, gardening store, gilmour garden tools, grand army of the republic building detroit, grand river, grand river avenue, grandmont-rosedale, highland park, home depot, local business, maumee lake region, native plants, neighborhood investment, north rosedale park, pages bookshop, pedestrian safety, public safety, raised crosswalks, street safety, streetscaping and public safety, tina castleberry, traffic violence

New streetscaping improvements have turned portions of Grand River Avenue, on Detroit’s West Side, from a street-level freeway into something more closely resembling a real city street that people might be able to safely hang out and shop on.

Public Safety Transit infrastructure

Morning Coffee, Detroit Traffic: The Post-COVID Craze Is About To Be Wild

May 3, 2021May 3, 2021 Nat M. Zorach 0 Comments ambassador bridge, bicycle safety, bike safety, car culture, cars, cycling infrastructure, cycling safety, Detroit, detroit police, detroit river, detroit traffic, dodge challenger, dodge charger, dodge durango, driving, gratiot, hi-riser, infrastructure, jeep, Mikki Taylor-Hendrix, nonmotorized infrastructure, pedestrian safety, riverfront park, traffic violence, west riverfront park, why do people always rev their dodge charger

Yesterday, Detroit was a whole traffic jam, as an increasingly vaccinated cross-section of, well, everyone, emerged from the cocoons of Michigan winter and lockdowns.

Energy Efficiency Construction Housing Rural Issues

Durable, Illiquid, Efficient, and Thoroughly Unsexy: Building Envelopes vs. Climate Change

April 30, 2021April 30, 2021 Nat M. Zorach 0 Comments 1837 border war, air conditioning efficiency, air source heat pump, amy ellsworth, building retrofit, buildings and housing workgroup, cadmus group, carbon footprint, CDD, climate change, climate zones, CMS, consulting industrial complex, Consumers Energy, decarbonization, DNR, DTE, DTE Energy, EGLE, electrification, energy usage intensity, environment great lakes and energy, EUI, HDD, heat pump, illiquid, insulation, insulation retrofit, jeannette lezaks, jeremy kraft, Leila Mekias, liquidity, mary templeton, michigan council on climate solutions, Michigan DNR, Michigan EGLE, michigan saves, mini-split, mr. slim, residential energy, retrofit, SEER, slipstream, split system heat pump, spray foam, TRC companies, uppco, Upper Peninsula, wsp, Yooper, yoopers

Building envelope retrofits aren’t very flashy. But they’re a crucial way to address the climate crisis.

Culture & Language

Dark Angel: The Dystopian 2010’s, When You And I Were Young

April 30, 2021April 30, 2021 Nat M. Zorach 0 Comments 1999 wto protests, 1999 wto protests in seattle, anachronox, antiglobalization, battle for seattle, blade runner, culture, cyberpunk, dark angel, deus ex, drones, dystopian, dystopian fiction, dystopian future, emergence, flying drones, ford taurus, genetic engineering, globalization, google glass, hanna, havana, james cameron, jenny durkan, jessica alba, johnny mnemonic, max guevara, minority report, neo-noir, nikita, noir, old cars in havana, omikron, police drone, police drones, police state, pop culture, seattle, smart car, space needle, stranger things, television, television media, the matrix, titanic, tv, world trade organization, WTO, wto protests, wto protests in seattle

Jessica Alba’s breakout role in Dark Angel, which has largely been forgotten amid our current golden age of high-quality TV series, surrounded some prophetic visions of a dystopian near-future.

Business & Economics Urban Planning Transit infrastructure Infrastructure

Michigan Population Numbers: How Long Before We Just Admit That This Strategy Isn’t Working?

April 27, 2021April 27, 2021 Nat M. Zorach 0 Comments 1837 border war, add lane miles, aging population, big two and a half, chaldeans, chrysler, Congress, congressional seats, fca, fiat chrysler, Ford, ford motor company, funding infrastructure, general motors, GM, Gretchen Whitmer, growth, infrastructure, infrastructure and economic growth, infrastructure investment, japan, level-of-service, matt maddock, mdot, meshawn maddock, michigan, michigan legislature, ohio, population decline, population growth, rail, rail infrastructure, refugees, rightsizing, rightsizing cities, rightsizing infrastructure, shrinking cities, stellantis, tokyo, toledo border war, transit, trucks, trump, US Congress, vmt, vmt reduction, whitmer

The census numbers are in, and we’re unsurprised to learn that population growth is stagnant in parts of the great,

Real Estate Policy

Study: Detroit CBO Is Not Quite There Yet

April 26, 2021April 26, 2021 Nat M. Zorach 0 Comments CAYMC, CBA, CBO, commercial development, commercial real estate, community benefits, community benefits agreement, community benefits ordinance, community development, community economic development, community engagement, community engagement strategies, community engagement strategy, corktown, corktown detroit development, detroit community benefits, detroit housing, detroit housing market, detroit local economy, detroit mayor mike duggan, duggan administration, economic development, housing, lending, mayor mike duggan, metro detroit, mike duggan, northside regeneration, paul mckee, rashida tlaib, real estate, real estate developers, St. Louis, sugar law center, sugar law center detroit, sugar law detroit

An academic paper looks at the Detroit Community Benefits Ordinance, or CBO. Conclusions? It’s had mixed success. We can get beyond this if we stop thinking about public policy in the simplistic terms of “pro” or “anti” development.

Urban Planning Mobility Infrastructure Tech

Webinar: Tech To Reduce Guesswork for Safer Streets

April 26, 2021April 26, 2021 Nat M. Zorach 0 Comments amazon, amazon web service, Amazon Web Services, AWS, big tech, break up big tech, breaking up big tech, CASE, cloud computing, congestion, connected, connected autonomous, connected autonomous shared electric, cycling safety, Detroit, distributed structures, elizabeth warren, intelligent transportation systems, intersections, ITS, jeff bezos, jeff bezos rocket ship, joe biden, mobility, pedestrian safety, public safety, redundancy, roadside unit, rsu, safe streets, sensors, smart transportation, switching costs, tony geara, traffic, traffic management, traffic safety

Traffic technology has improved by leaps and bounds in recent decades. While the ultimate solutions to ending traffic violence must come with better street designs and a reduced reliance on single-occupant automobiles, there are some interesting developments in technology that are allowing better modeling to understand driver behavior, intersection safety, and more. We learned about it from a webinar co-hosted by Canadian tech company Miovision.

Policy Public Safety

Police Reform: Imagining New Roles For A Safer, More Functional Society

April 23, 2021April 23, 2021 Nat M. Zorach 0 Comments 1312, abolish the police, acab, angie schmitt, austerity, black lives matter, BSEED, budgets, building department, building inspections, building inspector, building officials, community engagement, community meetings, cycling, cycling safety, dave bell, defund the police, democracy, Detroit, detroit police chief james craig, detroit police department, detroit will breathe, fuck the police, james craig, jessica parker, legal aid, municipal budgets, municipal government, nonmotorized transportation, pedestrian fatalities, pedestrian safety, police, police abolition, police brutality, police brutality lawsuits, police departments, police reform, policing in the united states, prison abolition, prison reform, public funding, reform the police, safe mobility, safe streets, social justice, social safety net, social welfare, social work, social worker, social workers, traffic safety, traffic violence

We expect police to respond to, well, everything. And they’re not suited for it. Rethinking policing in the United States will require us to figure out alternatives for who is responding to what issue.

Culture & Language Energy Infrastructure

American Meltdown: The Popular Imagination of Energy Disasters

April 20, 2021April 20, 2021 Nat M. Zorach 0 Comments apocalypse, chernobyl, city of quartz, cold war, disaster, disaster movies, don delillo, ecology of fear, Mike Davis, mutually assured mass destruction, postapocalyptic, soviet union, susan sontag, the imagination of disaster, white noise

Disasters plague systems that are designed or lauded as “too big to fail.” And, according to the wealth of cinema on the subject, we love to see it.

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