November 2009
6 posts
Transforming a Suburban Church into a Neighborhood →
I gave blood Saturday at the local church. There is a trail that dead ends within sight of the church but that last long stretch is a soggy field. Other than that the church has no walkable access to anything. It’s an island only accessible by car. (I politely made the suggestion that they connect the trail.)
That’s the problem with some suburban churches. Instead of physically...
October 2009
16 posts
“In certain instances, private-public partnerships have added value, but not in...”
– Heather Rogers, co-chairwoman of the Parkfairfax High-Occupancy Toll Lanes Task Force, voicing Alexandria’s opposition to HOT lanes on I-395/95.
Driving a Porche within a Sustainable Lifestyle →
This is great. But for all the people who can do this (and the many who can but don’t), there are plenty more who can’t because of where they live.
Something tells me that neither of these authors live within lower-income brackets and thusly they have chosen to live in the expensively-priced walkshed of rapid rail. As long as you can afford a million-dollar rowhouse, condo fees, or...
“I went to church, so I always dressed up and would ride my bicycle…so...”
– Lan Yin Tsai, 84, of New Jersey, talking about her outfit when she rides 150 miles for charity.
“In the 1940s, scientist were advocating direct taxes on people who were...”
– David Brunori, about to get into a tirade about junk food taxes. State Tax Notes, Oct. 19, 2009, p. 189.
Pothole Gallery →
If you aren’t gonna fix ‘em, might as well repurpose them as mock art. (Via GGW.)
Which reminds me kinda of proposals to turn the abandoned streetcar subway under Dupont Circle (a really big pothole?) into an underground art gallery (or museum or bike station or, uh, a streetcar subway).
“In this history, bikes are the American Indians to the car’s Christopher...”
– Chris Beam, on bicyclists and traffic law.
Why is America so slow? →
Queue up but first pause the mental Monorail tune for just a minute.
Now enter Japan’s plans for a maglev train between Tokyo and Osaka. What’s already a fast bullet train trip would be reduced further to just over an hour - and the distance covered is farther than that between New York and Washington. But the Japanese have always been train happy, and they’re Japanese.
...
Geek Out (Lubuntu) →
Just found out about yet another (promising!) flavor of Ubuntu, this one called Lubuntu, which sounds like everything I’ve always wanted from Ubuntu and Xubuntu but haven’t been getting. Ubuntu works on my old pre-9/11 desktop but not much better than XP, and this article confirms what I’ve always thought of Xubuntu — it doesn’t really run any zippier.
Real Estate that Survives a Recession with Flying... →
Even The New York Times says so. Arlington-style transit-oriented development is the way to go.
Wardrobe Suggestions for Men →
My wardrobe is pretty shakey and on its last legs. I’ve avoided clothes shopping for years. Yes, years. Mostly because I still haven’t lifted a budgetary crisis measure I implemented back in 2006. I’m mentally (and financially) preparing to change this, but I’d like wardrobe reformation to be premediated. Coincidentally, this guide is mostly stuff I want to get anyway.
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“Metro’s builders faced a challenge equal and opposite to that of their...”
– Zachary Schrag, on the history of the Washington Metro. On a personal note, my father worked on the construction Interstate 66 inside the Beltway, which includes the Orange Line, so that’s pretty much the 20th-century equivalent of saying my papa worked on the railroad (all the live-long day).
4 tags
“It turns out that old people especially care about living less car-dependent...”
– The Infrastucturalist on retrofitting the suburbs.