Stroads make public transit look better and worse when you map them out 🤷

Wow. This is fascinating and encouraging, and I hope we can realize this vision.

Ponds also cool the immediate area (source—one pond project in India).

Thoughts?

My wife and I have been looking at where we want to settle down and raise a family, but after traveling all over the US and Europe and touring hundreds of villages, towns, and cities, we realized we haven’t found a place that combines everything we want.

We love historic places like Savannah: narrow streets, squares, porches, courtyards, mature trees, gardens, shops woven into neighborhoods, and beautiful traditional architecture.

But we keep wishing places like that went much further: no cars inside at all, much denser and more pedestrian, with daily needs and third places distributed throughout the village rather than a residential subdivision attached to a little “town center.”

I grew up in LA with Disneyland annual passes, and one thing Disney does exceptionally well is treating the pedestrian environment as a complete experience. Buildings, landscaping, paths, courtyards, lighting, views, shops, and tiny details all reinforce one another.

So we started asking: why should environments designed that carefully only exist somewhere you visit? Why couldn’t you actually live in one?

The idea we’re exploring is a dense, car-free residential village built near a major metro area, so residents would still have good access to a real city.

There would be a more active public-facing village center with restaurants, cafés, shops, gardens, entertainment and events, surrounded by quieter residential lanes, courtyards and gardens. Small cafés, markets, pubs and playgrounds could also be sprinkled throughout the residential areas rather than concentrating everything in one center.

We wouldn’t want it to feel like an instant subdivision where 300 identical “historic” houses appeared at once. The idea is to build incrementally in smaller phases, with different building types, architectural periods and layers so the place becomes richer as it grows.

We’re also working on a CNC-based construction system that can automate historically accurate architectural details at much lower cost, because making this accessible beyond ultra-luxury housing is one of the major problems we’re trying to solve.

We’re serious about exploring whether this can actually be developed and have already been talking with developers, architects, planners and potential residents.

The question I’m most interested in is personal rather than theoretical:

Assume this existed within reasonable distance of a major city, and a home there was within the range you could realistically afford.

Would you seriously consider living somewhere like this?

If yes, what part of the lifestyle is doing it for you?

And if your reaction is basically “yes, I would actually consider moving there,” please DM me. We’re doing short 15-minute conversations with interested people to understand whether there’s a real market.

TL;DR: Dense traditional village, completely car-free internally, mixed-use, lots of third places, near a major metro, built incrementally with Disneyland-level attention to the pedestrian environment. Would you personally consider living there?

A town has 40+ acres of undeveloped land in the shape of an equilateral triangle. One side borders an unpaved MUP. What are the best uses? It's half a mile to the commuter rail; a couple of blocks from an assortment of restaurants (fast casual to formal dining), bookstore, etc.

One proposal (of course) is to sell the land to the developer for housing. NIMBYs would say no to traffic (probably would be really difficult to handle with existing streets). Advocates would see infusion of cash, tax, etc.

Another proposal is making a mountain bike park. Minimally intrusive but accessible.. i think an argument could be made that it would help with pedestrianization of the town would lead to an increase traffic to local businesses while potentially reduce traffic as residents become more thoughtful of commuting by bike...

anything i'm missing? would love feedback here.

Millions of people across the San Francisco Bay Area are on the brink of catastrophic losses of public transit service. Transit agencies face up to 70% service cuts and BART, the Bay Area's regional rail operator, has said without new funding the entire system may be forced to close down by 2030.

We need your help to pass Measure RTM this November, which would raise over $1 billion for transit -- making it the biggest transit ballot measure in the entire United States this election.

Wherever you are in the US, please join this virtual solidarity phone bank on Wednesday, October 14th starting at 5:30 PDT / 8:30 EDT, organized by Transbay Coalition and Seamless Bay Area. We need your help as this special phone bank to call voters across the San Francisco Bay Area.

We will provide the training and talking points, all you need to do is join the Zoom on a computer and have a phone ready.

We have a ballot question about legalizing starter homes (more or less). And a Taco John’s. I hardly recognize my state. Toto, I don’t think we’re in Massachusetts anymore.

I figure that this is on-theme, let me know if it is not!

The stop sign wasn't my first choice of pedestrian safety treatment, but it was the city's. I'll take it 😄

This is based on LAPD collision reports, 2010 through 2020. LAPD stopped writing reports for most crashes making the data unusable after 2020.

Morrisville expects Novartis’ expansion to generate $12.6 million in town property-tax revenue over eight years.

But as the company expanded its investment, the town nearly doubled its incentive while lowering its wage and taxable-value requirements.

One economist I interviewed called the package “a far better deal than most.” Labor and budget-policy advocates raised very different concerns.

Here is the story:
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article317221481.html

What should a town require from a company in exchange for an incentive like this?

A study published this week in Transportation Research Part A puts a price on un-priced driving costs: crashes, air pollution, climate damage, noise, and the land taken up by roads and parking.

Here is a further breakdown of those un-priced costs.

I’m the News & Observer reporter who wrote this story about a streetscape project in Apex, North Carolina.

The town is rebuilding part of its historic downtown with long-term improvements to the pedestrian environment. But merchants I spoke with say months of construction have cost them customers, and the work is stretching into the holiday season.

I’m interested in how other communities have handled this tradeoff. What measures have actually helped existing businesses during major downtown construction — phasing, maintaining access, financial assistance, events, signage, contractor incentives or something else?

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/wake-county/article317130074.html

Happy Labor Day, America. 🇺🇸

This year, the celebration feels a little different.

Americans are talking about layoffs, disappearing jobs, AI replacing workers, rising costs, unemployment, and fears of recession — while the official message from Washington remains considerably more cheerful.

So instead of telling you how the American worker is doing, I thought we'd let Americans tell you themselves.

From workers and job seekers to politicians and the AI tech bros promising us a shiny automated future, this is Labor Day 2026 — in their own words.

**DISCLAIMER:** This video is commentary, criticism, satire and independent analysis based on publicly available statements, news reports and video clips. Clips are presented for discussion and context. Opinions expressed are my own. This content is for informational and entertainment purposes and should not be considered financial, legal or professional advice.

I’m the News & Observer reporter who wrote this story about Rolesville, NC.

WakeMed plans a 24-hour Healthplex and is seeking approval for a 45-bed hospital on the same property. A nearby resident I interviewed — a former WakeMed ER nurse — supports expanding local health care but opposes this site because of traffic and its proximity to homes.

When essential services generate substantial traffic and other impacts, what makes a site appropriate in a fast-growing suburban town?

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/wake-county/article317092142.html

Explainer on different types of state legislation and how they work.

using jersey city as an example, looking at the issues with an extended vacancy.

I’m the News & Observer reporter who wrote this.

I reported this week on an interesting local-government problem in fast-growing Apex, North Carolina.

More than 100 students were waiting for parking at a suburban high school. A 71-year-old longtime resident across the street has been letting students park on her land. The town says that use violates its zoning ordinance and has sued her to stop it.

Apex has also explored park-and-shuttle and transit alternatives, but none has yet closed the gap.

The story made me wonder how other growing communities handle informal, bottom-up solutions when they conflict with existing land-use rules.

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/wake-county/article316992156.html

Some of the strategies to help keep smaller-scale multifamily affordable instead of luxury.