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

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I have several great policy paper titles right now:

To What End? The Value of Public Participation or How I Learned To Love Public Engagement Theater

Reasonable Nexus Thinking For All Practitioners

Why Compelling Government Interest Should Be The Primary Lens

The Comprehensive Plan Is Sacrosanct...Until It's Not.
 
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Email of the day:

I am inquiring if there are any ordinances in the city of _______ that applies to burial related to human ashes. My late husband was cremated few years ago and would like to properly bury the remains on my property. Also, my water meter is located in the front of my home and I am aware it must be buried 18 inches deep and 300 feet away from public water supply.




I was happy there is a section of our ordinance that said 'human remains can only be buried in a cemetery.'
 
Bing AI image is free and looks to be more competent than Dall-e. This is "a six-story building in Vermont with a British sports car out front":
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Yeah, it's just doing Montpelier again...
 
Faust_Motel said:
competent
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I saw something recently from APA promoting a generative AI learning session, or something along those lines. Your image reminds me why Planners ought not to go chasing those waterfalls - we need to stick to the rivers and lakes we're used to (artists/architects/urban designers). It's whack that teh BANZINGAI tool you used placed no people in this context, parked an expensive car in the middle of the road, failed to place stop signs at the intersection, and produced confused dangly mash ups under the balconies that appear to be Frankensteined fire ladders, or structural brackets, or plant vines, it's so difficult to discern what's what. I suppose Stephen Colbert, if he were an urban designer, would say there is urban truthiness here. Streetscapiness?
 
Wannaplan? said:
I saw something recently from APA promoting a generative AI learning session, or something along those lines. Your image reminds me why Planners ought not to go chasing those waterfalls - we need to stick to the rivers and lakes we're used to (artists/architects/urban designers). It's whack that teh BANZINGAI tool you used placed no people in this context, parked an expensive car in the middle of the road, failed to place stop signs at the intersection, and produced confused dangly mash ups under the balconies that appear to be Frankensteined fire ladders, or structural brackets, or plant vines, it's so difficult to discern what's what. I suppose Stephen Colbert, if he were an urban designer, would say there is urban truthiness here. Streetscapiness?
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Tangent here but the last Planning Magazine pretty much infuriated me. "upskilling?" "Planning with foresight and hindsight?" Ya mean "learning new things and "thinking about the future and reviewing the accuracy of past predictions? We don't need new words for these things and writing whole articles to do so is a waste of paper.
 
Faust_Motel said:
Tangent here but the last Planning Magazine pretty much infuriated me. "upskilling?" "Planning with foresight and hindsight?" Ya mean "learning new things and "thinking about the future and reviewing the accuracy of past predictions? We don't need new words for these things and writing whole articles to do so is a waste of paper.
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There's your new drinking game for NPC2024. You'll probably hear "upskill" or close to it in sessions a few dozen times.
 
Just saw a news item where a one billion dollar lottery ticket was sold at a liquor store in California. As a land use, perhaps we ought to stop calling it a "liquor store" and maybe give it a glow up. The term "liquor store" sounds so bad, connotes urban violence and sales of single cigarettes. And "convenience store" is so bland. How about "Storefront of Libations and Lottery"? I don't know what NAICS code it would get, but how about "SOLL"? The SOLL of the neighborhood, and all that. This a Glow Up? Or is it Lights Out?
 
Wannaplan? said:
Just saw a news item where a one billion dollar lottery ticket was sold at a liquor store in California. As a land use, perhaps we ought to stop calling it a "liquor store" and maybe give it a glow up. The term "liquor store" sounds so bad, connotes urban violence and sales of single cigarettes. And "convenience store" is so bland. How about "Storefront of Libations and Lottery"? I don't know what NAICS code it would get, but how about "SOLL"? The SOLL of the neighborhood, and all that. This a Glow Up? Or is it Lights Out?
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Considering that liquor is available for purchase in grocery stores in Cali, I'm not seeing an issue here - easy access to hard liquor is a fundamental right for Californians.
 
Wannaplan? said:
Just saw a news item where a one billion dollar lottery ticket was sold at a liquor store in California. As a land use, perhaps we ought to stop calling it a "liquor store" and maybe give it a glow up. The term "liquor store" sounds so bad, connotes urban violence and sales of single cigarettes. And "convenience store" is so bland. How about "Storefront of Libations and Lottery"? I don't know what NAICS code it would get, but how about "SOLL"? The SOLL of the neighborhood, and all that. This a Glow Up? Or is it Lights Out?
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Michigan already has an appropriate name - Party Store :smokingcigar: :scotch:
Bubba said:
Considering that liquor is available for purchase in grocery stores in Cali, I'm not seeing an issue here - easy access to hard liquor is a fundamental right for Californians.
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You need to hangout in Michigan too. Open shelves of hard liquor at grocery stores are common.
 
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mendelman said:
Michigan's already has an appropriate name - Party Store :smokingcigar: :scotch:

You need to hangout in Michigan too. Open shelves of hard liquor at grocery stores are common.
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You beat me to it with party store. No problem finding liquor in Illinois, unlike New York where it could only be sold in an independently owned store. Also, Illinois has to be up there with gambling opportunities. Video gaming is pretty ubiquitous outside of Chicago and its affluent suburbs.
 
Same in Arizona. I can get the good stuff at the grocery store. Liquor stores are just sometimes closer or more convenient. Plus the one near me is a drive-thru that's famous for not checking IDs when I was a kid.
 
DVD said:
Same in Arizona. I can get the good stuff at the grocery store. Liquor stores are just sometimes closer or more convenient. Plus the one near me is a drive-thru that's famous for not checking IDs when I was a kid.
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Utah is different than all of that. I'm not even aware of exactly how, because either it changes too much or I am just not allowed to know, maybe? I once held a Seagram's Cooler in my hand for a moment, but I felt super dirty about that so I put it back. :)

I love Utah. I do. And I loved my childhood and I love my life. I keep thinking about starting a thread "Under the Banner of Ursus" to explain the last five years and how I've left Mormonism, but you all know how I overshare anyway, and I'm not sure how weird it would get. Would anybody want to ask questions and/or read about that? I don't know, but I think about it. I still literally have no interest in alcohol. It smells bad, you guys. I don't think I could drink it at this point (I'm like, 50. Why start?)
 
mendelman said:
liquor at grocery stores
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In the neighborhoods of Legacy Cities in the Rust Belt is the scourge of chaos - namely, the liquor store. It's more than just getting liquor. It's a place that attracts an unseemly element, usually filled with a cast of characters that are low income, carrying heat, and likely stoned out on meth. And the general citizen wants these dens of crime gone from their neighborhood. You all act like you don't know what it is I am talking about. This liquor store I speak of is not an everyday kind of stop for the likes of us. (Hence my pun - liquor stores are the soul of the neighborhood. A sarcastic pun, I guess. And probably not a very good one, in hindsight.)
 
DVD said:
Same in Arizona. I can get the good stuff at the grocery store. Liquor stores are just sometimes closer or more convenient. Plus the one near me is a drive-thru that's famous for not checking IDs when I was a kid.
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You can get all booze imaginable at every gas station and corner store here in Nevada. What's weird, though, is that gas stations do NOT sell booze-free beer. I am partial to the Lagunitas INPA, but for some reason gas stations don't sell it. Don't know why--no rule prohibits it alongside real booze.

I go to Smith's (part of the Kroger family) to buy it, but the problem there is that their machines think it's alcohol, and it's not, so the purchase gets rejected until the manager gets around to overriding. (I'm 47.) I've told them time after time it's not alcohol.

With that said, I do enjoy an occasional Torpedo from time to time.
 
ursus said:
Utah is different than all of that. I'm not even aware of exactly how, because either it changes too much or I am just not allowed to know, maybe? I once held a Seagram's Cooler in my hand for a moment, but I felt super dirty about that so I put it back. :)

I love Utah. I do. And I loved my childhood and I love my life. I keep thinking about starting a thread "Under the Banner of Ursus" to explain the last five years and how I've left Mormonism, but you all know how I overshare anyway, and I'm not sure how weird it would get. Would anybody want to ask questions and/or read about that? I don't know, but I think about it. I still literally have no interest in alcohol. It smells bad, you guys. I don't think I could drink it at this point (I'm like, 50. Why start?)
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Iā€™d read that.

Quit drinking for any amount of time and youā€™ll see how saturated our society is in advertising and cultural pressure to drink. Itā€™s wild and other than sports, cars, and the weather, one of the only things men are allowed to connect with one another over. So- I think itā€™s normal if you reach middle age and are not drinking at all to not feel like taking it up again. I love to nurse a decent bourbon a time or two a year but more than one or two in a night takes me straight to hangover town (Yay middle age!) and I just have stuff to do all the time where feeling crappy from drinking is incompatible.

I worked painting houses for a Mormon guy for a couple of summers. Nice guy and we used to break for lunch at his house if we were working nearby- nice family as far as I could tell but a little insular. For me I grew up not Catholic in a pretty Catholic place and can trace a lot of my cynicism about religion (and even about growing up in a rural place) to that experience so am suspicious about all religions.
 
jumbach said:
With that said, I do enjoy an occasional Torpedo from time to time.
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Off topic: SN Torpedo is pretty solid, and shows up in my IPA rotation on a semi-regular basis (although I do try to favor the local brews). I used to get SN's annual harvest ale every year, but the last one I got (maybe ten years ago?) was so sweet I couldn't finish it.
 
jumbach said:
You can get all booze imaginable at every gas station and corner store here in Nevada. What's weird, though, is that gas stations do NOT sell booze-free beer. I am partial to the Lagunitas INPA, but for some reason gas stations don't sell it. Don't know why--no rule prohibits it alongside real booze.

I go to Smith's (part of the Kroger family) to buy it, but the problem there is that their machines think it's alcohol, and it's not, so the purchase gets rejected until the manager gets around to overriding. (I'm 47.) I've told them time after time it's not alcohol.

With that said, I do enjoy an occasional Torpedo from time to time.
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I thought N/A beers had some small amount if alcohol in it. Never bought it myself.
 
Back to asking AI for buildings. this is actually pretty close to the maximum size building my new FBC allows, though Dall-e 3 + Bing still put it in a more urban instead of infill context. The other three options it gave me with this prompt were a bit incoherent RE: architectural detail but way better than the tentacle-style balcony supports I was getting before. I really like that it "heard" me about fenestration here.

Here's the prompt: "A small modern building with elements of classical architecture no more than six stories tall in total with retail on the ground floor and apartments with inset balconies on the upper floors, a stone faƧade on the ground floor and red brick and stone facades on the upper floors and at least 20% windows on the upper floors and 50% windows on the ground story, fronting on a major road in the context as an infill building between 1980's office buildings and big-box retail stores"

And here's the best of the 4 images I got:
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Got all my packet prep work done yesterday for the big show tomorrow. Now let's see how bad this goes.
 
Wannaplan? said:
Lol. Noice work channeling Colbert!

But...:doubtful: I wonder if ADA guidelines would say that greenery is a good way to enhance accessibility?
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I think we have to leave it that just like Noam Chomsky says chatgpt hallucinates language dall-e hallucinates architecture.
 
I do have a big public engagement/visioning meeting coming up and I described it to dall-e:
 

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Faust_Motel said:
I do have a big public engagement/visioning meeting coming up and I described it to dall-e:
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That...is scarily accurate. Oof.

Vest.

Short cropped beard.

Barely thirty middle aged and gray-haired participants representing only about 0.3% of the population making decisions for the entire community.

Etc.

Etc.
 
mendelman said:
scarily accurate
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No. Take a closer look at the U.S. flag. I mean, like, why AI? It looks like the Adbusters flag:

subscribe.adbusters.org

Corporate America Flag 2023!

The story of America is a chronicle of democracy derailed, a revolutionary spirit suppressed, and a once-proud people reduced to servitude. Wave this infamous piece of protest art in the streets, fly it outside of your home, or hang it defiantly on your wall. The double-takes and commentary will...
subscribe.adbusters.org subscribe.adbusters.org
 
mendelman said:
That...is scarily accurate. Oof.

Vest.

Short cropped beard.

Barely thirty middle aged and gray-haired participants representing only about 0.3% of the population making decisions for the entire community.

Etc.

Etc.
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Funny things is I asked for a diversity of people, young and old, rural and urban but I think the AI heard "Town Plan Meeting" and decided all white and old!
 
Faust_Motel said:
Funny things is I asked for a diversity of people, young and old, rural and urban but I think the AI heard "Town Plan Meeting" and decided all white and old!
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Perhaps these AIs will save us from our own presumptive pretensions.

They may have a better handle on the reality of practice versus our theoretical ideals.

But...in your region isn't this a more accurate depiction of your 'Diversity Bell Curve' anyway?

To coin a phrase.
 
Many zoning codes need to be completely ditched and replaced through a zero-base creation method.
 
mendelman said:
Many zoning codes need to be completely ditched and replaced through a zero-base creation method.
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Pleading ignorance because recent events make me want to do better: what is a zero-base creation method? Can only Jesus do it or is it available to Zoroastrians as well (I'm kinda in the market, ya feel?)

But seriously. What doth that mean?
 
ursus said:
Pleading ignorance because recent events make me want to do better: what is a zero-base creation method? Can only Jesus do it or is it available to Zoroastrians as well (I'm kinda in the market, ya feel?)

But seriously. What doth that mean?
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It's one of several generally accepted theoretical budgeting methods (ie. zero-based, incremental, etc.).

This method is that you start your budget drafting at zero each cycle which requires you to examine every part of the budget's purpose, intent and outcome.

We too often do major zoning updates in an incremental way - expand on this, reduce that, add this - but zoning is such a complex function and has such huge potential for unintended consequences (both good and bad) that we should either blow up the existing and start completely new or do targeted and precision changes here and there (over many cycles/years) that permit us to positively fiddle with an existing zoning code while being able to handle calibration well and increase the avoidance of unintended consequences.

meme_Ramses_soitbewritten-soitbedone.jpg

;)
 
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mendelman said:
It's one of several generally accepted theoretical budgeting methods (ie. zero-based, incremental, etc.).

This method is that you start your budget drafting at zero each cycle which requires you to examine every part of the budget's purpose, intent and outcome.

We too often do major zoning updates in an incremental way - expand on this, reduce that, add this - but zoning is such a complex function and has such huge potential for unintended consequences (both good and bad) that we either blow up the existing and start completely new or do targeted and precision changes here and there in a zoning code (over many cycles/years) that permit us to positively fiddle with an existing zoning code while being able to handle calibration well and increase the avoidance of unintended consequences.

View attachment 61002
;)
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Yes do this. Otherwise you end up like me and have to manage full site plan review... ...of food trucks. (with design review advice from a second committee).
 
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