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Planning: general 🌇 Random Planning Thoughts (and Photos) Deserving No Thread Of Their Own

Doohickie said:
You end up with cute 1920-30s bungalos with 4000 sq ft modern homes randomly dropped in.
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Same thing is happening in the neighborhood where I bought my first house many years ago.

Also, you can do what the folks who bought my house did, and "pop the top". The house last sold for about eight times what I originally paid for it back in the late 1990s. Unfortunately, I wasn't the seller.

No teardowns around here. People ask big bucks for hippie hovels authentic 120 year old gabled-ell Folk Victorians, and the numbers just don't work.
 
Doohickie said:
Yes but the McMansions don't always; some are still on single lots.
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You can always go up and add a couple of units. That's been popular in Nashville.

nashville before.JPG


nashville after.JPG
 
Cartoonists break down Robert Crumb's iconic cartoon strip about development, more commonly known as "A Short History of America," starts at the 2:18 mark:


(Has some swears, probably not safe for work, but probably good to go if you have headphones on.)
 
Wannaplan? said:
Cartoonists break down Robert Crumb's iconic cartoon strip about development, more commonly known as "A Short History of America," starts at the 2:18 mark:


(Has some swears, probably not safe for work, but probably good to go if you have headphones on.)
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This is great.

It's in the same theory of art as David Macaulay with his Mill and City books

51GNFGbvxQL.jpg
 
Robert Moses' Nine Commandments, from a speech to graduates of the New York Law School.
  1. Have pride in your city.
  2. Be suspicious of lurid criticism, baseless disclosures, and easy remedies
  3. There are no easy fixes
  4. Belong to a party, but don’t be a violent partisan
  5. In government, view every dogma with skepticism
  6. Never fear to be in a minority
  7. Beware of dogmas about equality
  8. Beware of extraneous issues, appeals to race, creed, color, and residence
  9. Try your best to guard against appeals to bias and prejudice in whatever form, ancient grudges, bygone feuds, and what the poet called “old unhappy far off things and battles long ago.”
Go ahead. Fire away.
 
Dan said:
Robert Moses' Nine Commandments, from a speech to graduates of the New York Law School.
  1. Have pride in your city.
  2. Be suspicious of lurid criticism, baseless disclosures, and easy remedies
  3. There are no easy fixes
  4. Belong to a party, but don’t be a violent partisan
  5. In government, view every dogma with skepticism
  6. Never fear to be in a minority
  7. Beware of dogmas about equality
  8. Beware of extraneous issues, appeals to race, creed, color, and residence
  9. Try your best to guard against appeals to bias and prejudice in whatever form, ancient grudges, bygone feuds, and what the poet called “old unhappy far off things and battles long ago.”
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10. Do or do not; there is no try






































3028.jpg
 
mendelman said:
Is the public ROW right on top of the front property line? No area for setback, then house built into the slope?

Stupid people?
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During my tenure as an AHJ I saw settings nearly this bad. This image looks photoshopped to me.

On the worst I saw the county's 4wd pickup could not climb an uphill drive unless I turned it around and used reverse.
 
You know what I also love? Site plan review via Voice mail and phone tag. With a new engineer because the landowner is trying to cheap out and make a plan submission deadline. On a project that ruins a main street with a big parking lot and was chucked in just under the wire of the adoption of our new code. :r:
 
Is anybody else playing with Midjourney? I asked it for some planner-ish pictures and they are nicer than what I was getting from dall-e...

HUEY_Williston_vermont_streetscape_in_2050_at_the_taft_corners__4199e6c9-b68a-45bc-b565-686944896cd6.png
 
Faust_Motel said:
Yup. Just from a plain English prompt. Here's another. I asked for "nice five story apartment buildings in New England with mountains in the background; photorealistic."
View attachment 59849
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The cupola in the top left looks off to me, it's like floating in the middle of the roof. Also, the overhang for the porch on the building in the foreground just opens to the street and no sidewalk? In the top right, the building in the background has a front door opens up to lawn when the building itself overall relates to the street? Yeah, AI is shit.
 
There are definitely some perspective issues and I get a kick out of the idea a corner building MUST have a vertical element.

:blueshirt:
 
Dan said:
I don't know if anyplace else is experiencing this, but downtown here, there's been an explosion in the number of barber shops specializing in fades. If there's an empty storefront, odds are it'll soon be filled by either a smoke shop (which I understand is a thing throughout the US) or a fade shop.

Here's two new fade shops that opened next door to each other.

View attachment 59608
Fade shops are innocuous uses, but it seems unusual that there's suddenly so many of them.

I've been reading that hipster and upscale "barbering" and "grooming" shops have been a growing trend in the US, but that's not what I've been seeing here.
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(Notice that one store's signage is "Beauty Salon and Barber Shop"..)

Around these parts of New York City, many barbershops are filled with female clients getting the latest rage in haircut fashion: fades, tapers, undercuts, and hair tattoos.
It's also the rage, especially for women, to get the color of these hairstyles changed very often by colorists in barbershops.

@Dan Could it be possible that you underestimated the female consumer demand for downtown barbershop services?

BTW So many skilled "hair tattoo artists", (a new profession?), seem to work in barbershops.
One sort of trendy woman in my family has long thick hair--with a V-shaped undercut/fade & a hair tattoo at the nape of her neck.
It looks very similar to this:
undercut-long-hair-k.jpg

The hair tattoo design seems to grow out quickly.
You wouldn't believe how often she visits the barbershop to get the design refreshed!
 
Possibly unpopular opinion: just because it's "ethnic vernacular" doesn't make it right.

ethnic vernacular.jpg
 
I am kicking around an idea for a YouTube Podcast show about cities, towns, planners, and the planning profession. It would be called Pints with Planners where it would be a conversational/interview format while we consume a pint of a cold beverage inside of various microbreweries.

Knowing that not all planners drink, we might even change it up on occasion and go out doors or other location with a pint of ice cream instead.
 
"The characteristics of this commercial complex at the north end of the corridor is commonly found in this neighborhood"
 
michaelskis said:
I am kicking around an idea for a YouTube Podcast show about cities, towns, planners, and the planning profession. It would be called Pints with Planners where it would be a conversational/interview format while we consume a pint of a cold beverage inside of various microbreweries.

Knowing that not all planners drink, we might even change it up on occasion and go out doors or other location with a pint of ice cream instead.
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Planners in Bars Getting Beer?
 
michaelskis said:
I am kicking around an idea for a YouTube Podcast show about cities, towns, planners, and the planning profession. It would be called Pints with Planners where it would be a conversational/interview format while we consume a pint of a cold beverage inside of various microbreweries.

Knowing that not all planners drink, we might even change it up on occasion and go out doors or other location with a pint of ice cream instead.
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Come to Fort Worth and I'll take you to my favorite craft brewer who has started their own line of craft sodas, as well as offering iced tea selections from another local business. Something for everyone!
 
michaelskis said:
I am kicking around an idea for a YouTube Podcast show about cities, towns, planners, and the planning profession. It would be called Pints with Planners where it would be a conversational/interview format while we consume a pint of a cold beverage inside of various microbreweries.

Knowing that not all planners drink, we might even change it up on occasion and go out doors or other location with a pint of ice cream instead.
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Happy to do an online session. We can hang out at different craft brew bars in different states.
 
michaelskis said:
I am kicking around an idea for a YouTube Podcast show about cities, towns, planners, and the planning profession. It would be called Pints with Planners where it would be a conversational/interview format while we consume a pint of a cold beverage inside of various microbreweries.

Knowing that not all planners drink, we might even change it up on occasion and go out doors or other location with a pint of ice cream instead.
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Yes!

Need an alternative to this one: Planning Commission podcast
 
Wannaplan? said:
Yeah, for sure. It seems like saying it is "ethinic vernacular" is perhaps code for something else, but saying it nicely? Why would anyone care if a building's stylings are "ethnic"?
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Maybe they're trying to virtue signal by implying a building that's otherwise "garish" by typical planner/architect/civic beauty standards -- yellow and red color scheme, covered in amateurish hand-painted signs, etc. -- is really okay if it's "ethnic".

Would anybody try to imply something like this should be embraced in the built environment because it's "ethnic vernacular" for rural working class white people?

rural ethnic vernacular.jpg


I get the "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" argument, but that argument just justifies lowest common denominator development.

main street myth aesthetics don't matter.jpg
 
A or B?

A.

vinyl sided church.jpg


B.

warehouse in my backyard.jpg


michaelskis said:
I am kicking around an idea for a YouTube Podcast show about cities, towns, planners, and the planning profession. It would be called Pints with Planners where it would be a conversational/interview format while we consume a pint of a cold beverage inside of various microbreweries.

Knowing that not all planners drink, we might even change it up on occasion and go out doors or other location with a pint of ice cream instead.
Click to expand...
Sign me up! I'll admit that I have a bit of planner pretender syndrome, though, because I'm not nearly as articulate on the fly as other planner types I hear on podcasts.
 
Dan said:
I get the "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" argument, but that argument just justifies lowest common denominator development.
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Dan, this is such a shitpost. How long have you been in the profession, like maybe 30+ years? You know that "lowest common denominator development" deflects from how the built environment actually gets built. You know the reality involves various approaches and avenues to getting any particular use operating. Maybe in your area you can force applicants to conform to an aesthetic standard, regardless if it is new construction or a reoccupancy of an existing building.
 
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