People Deserve Beautiful Things
The SDBA program introduced an interesting discussion about design standards in renovation. It happens to be something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about.
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Cities & Urban Planning
Why Parking Minimums Are Bad.
We can build cities for people, or we can build them for cars. Eliminating parking minimums, which require that off-street parking spaces be included in every development project, is a great way to move us toward the former after decades of moving toward the latter.
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Hubbard Farms Gets Serious About Density
Far from the haunted basements of my own portfolio with SDBA, Southwest Detroit is rocking a few new real estate development projects these days, including one that local residents should know about.
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Nat Zorach Joins ULI Larson Fellowship
The Urban Land Institute will host its newest cohort of Larson fellows, kicking off tomorrow morning in downtown Detroit.
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Musings from Up North: Are Planners Pragmatic Dreamers? Or Just Jaded Bureaucrats?
Michigan has a ton of professional talent. It’s also got a lot of planners who are stuck in the passenger seat in a vehicle driving 85mph in the left lane, headed toward Sprawl City. Can we fix the worst politics of the profession and still keep our jobs? Or, is it simply incumbent upon us to figure out better, more sustainable solutions wherever we can?
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Better Cities Film Festival and YIMBY in Detroit
YIMBY enthusiasts from Columbus, North Carolina, California, Flint, and beyond converged on Detroit yesterday evening to see a new film featuring M. Nolan Gray, Research Director of California YIMBY.
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Planning Conference Day 2: Downtown Traverse, Renewable Energy
The second day of the annual conference of the Michigan Association of Planning involved a great tour, a lot of learning, and some serious head-scratching about how little attention is being paid to topics of decarbonization and climate change.
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Day 1 of the Michigan Planning Conference
A trip to Traverse City is the cherry on top of a year filled with exciting developments in planning world.
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Midjourney Parameters: Style & Chaos In Speculative Urbanism
Imagining cities and their infrastructure using artificial intelligence, and playing around with some of the weirder parameters in Midjourney to see what we can squeeze out of the generative AI platform.
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Is Bus Electrification Economical or Environmental? Possibly Both.
City buses have historically been powered by dirty diesel engines. Upgrading to CNG improves emissions and reduces smog, but doesn’t improve efficiency. Electrification, on the other hand, could drastically improve efficiency, drastically reduce emissions, and reduce operating costs to boot. There is a higher capital cost up front, which can potentially be amortized over a longer lifespan.
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