Hot Empire in Decline Summer

I remember reading about the Roman Empire in school, and thinking about how unfortunate it must have been to have these successions of emperors who were completely insane. Nero (54-68) and Caligula (37-41) were perhaps the most famous, but there was also Commodus (177-192) and Elagabalus (218-222). We hear less about Tiberius (14-37), who was kinda nuts and did some terrible things, but also did some good things to evade complete scorn of historians.

To be clear, I spend very little time thinking about the Roman Empire, which makes me horribly un-masculine and boring. But I was talking with a friend about this the other day, lamenting how slow and plodding the collapse of the Trump Administration was, to which he pointed out that the Roman Empire took four hundred years to fall apart. A real head-scratcher, to be sure. We wondered if people were aware of the decline before it happened.

Most likely not.

It’s not as though the Germanic hordes just up and descended upon Rome and it all ended. Maybe they had to first deal with a few centuries of leaders lying through their teeth, contriving idiotic fucking wars to fight, or engaging in domestic witch hunts using a masked and lavishly-funded Gestapo to apprehend anyone who looks a certain way.

 

Hot Summer, Generally

I’ve been enjoying a few weeks at home after running around the country for the entire month of June. We started with a trip to Santa Barbara because my wife had a work trip and decided that a trip to California was, well, all but mandatory. (I cautiously endorse these ridiculously-priced travel credit cards for anyone who flies more than a couple of times a year, although Delta’s recent bouts of engines blowing up or almost crashing into military aircraft has me questioning this). More content on that coming as soon as I can assemble it.

It’s been hot, and after about a week of cooler temperatures, it appears to be getting hotter again. I wouldn’t mind even sweltering heat– let’s recall that I lived in Missouri for a few summers, where it would sometimes not even cool off into the 80s at night- if it weren’t for the fact that we’re also dealing with wildfire smoke pretty much constantly now. Fantastic!

In addition to dealing with this from a level of household ergonomics (we constantly have to scrub off our porch as it is perpetually caked with a layer of what I call “Michigan’s business-friendly regulatory environment”) as well as respiratory exposure (I have sensitive lungs), I further am subject to LinkedIn posts about how great the OBBB is for enabling new LIHTC deals, or how great these new data centers are for the economy (inevitably making these wildfires that much worse by all but literally pouring fossil fuels onto them).

Hot Productivity Summer

I’m also enjoying my summer “off” to write curriculum. Why should I work 60 hours during the year when I can save maybe 5-10 hours a week and work during my unpaid summer?!

Because the construction industry has a pretty limited body of curriculum, with very little in the realm of academic discourse on construction management that deals with anything other than technical construction methods, I’m starting from scratch on a lot of it. Some of it is engineering, while there’s plenty of obtuse academic literature, and then anything that is more in the realm of urban planning or geography or social sciences– that should be of interest to me- has very little in the way of technical content.

Maybe I’ll write a textbook one day!

But in the meantime, I have several case studies I’m looking forward to presenting for my Principles of Real Estate and Construction Finance class:

• Financing Climate Resilience in Miami.
• Gowanus Redevelopment in Brooklyn. 
• Reinventing Finance in Detroit.
• Assessing the Redevelopment of Jobbers Canyon in Omaha.

Each of these deals with a different angle of the real estate development process. Miami looks at a granular level of the threat of sea level rise and compares and contrasts the local scale of resilient infrastructure improvements, between Miami and Miami Beach, and thinking about how to contend with climate change in a state that has all but made the phrase illegal.

The Gowanus study looks at the question of building the case for creating a new market, and how it’s not as simple as checking a box to rezone parcels, since it inevitably requires major infrastructure improvement and, in this case, environmental remediation. Jobbers Canyon in Omaha was the largest-ever demolition of a historic district– and the study asks students to compare successes from another nearby successful program that prioritized innovative redevelopment to demolition. Finally, the Detroit study looks at questions of how to make math work in markets where math doesn’t work.

Happy to share any of these once I’m done! It has been a mad rush to get things in order before the semester starts in– yeek- all of a month.