Half of bars “surveyed by the Sun-Times”:http://www.suntimes.com/popups/NWS/air1025.html had air quality that violated EPA standards for healthy adults (red, purple, or maroon on the AQI).
Three — Jimmy’s, Long Room, and Club Foot — had air bad enough to issue a first-stage air pollution alert under the Pollutant Standards Index; only smoke-free restaurants garnered air quality ratings in the “good” range.
“My fellow Americans went to war and all I got was this damned amazing second home.”
Get the t-shirt (by Dan Rybicky, now on view at 1100 N Damen) at The American Scream, plus:
“My ecoterrorists went to California and all they did was bloe up these damned SUV car dealerships.”
Shruti Daté Singh writes in Crain’s:
“Bridgeport’s alderman, James A. Balcer (11th), hopes the World Series will boost his efforts to redevelop the Halsted Street corridor. He wants more stores, coffee shops and high-end restaurants.”
Probably not what the Lumpen kids had in mind when they christened (in a strange bit of irony so bitter that it circles right around to sound smarmy and booster-ish, especially when uttered by “artists”) Bridgeport as “the community of the future”:http://lumpen.com/communityofthefuture/home.html.
Update: Not only did the Sox win, but “a Missed Connection”:http://chicago.craigslist.org/mis/106744217.html was made aboard the #44 Wallace: “I never see cute, IPod-wearing, backpack-carrying boys on my bus… I’m crazy about your hair. I hope you were impressed with my lefthand text-messaging/righthand IPod scrolling moves. Double-fisting technology is hot?” Next up: well, who knows? As Lawrence Downes wrote in the Times on Sunday, “Packs of rabid wolves sweeping down from Canada… Sinkholes swallowing Nebraska. An asteroid.”
An Oregon court struck down “Measure 37”:https://westnorth.com/2005/04/14/measure-37-planning-failed-to-engage-imaginations, saying that the measure violates equal protection by creating two classes of property owners (those who bought before and after the regulations). This may not ultimately stand up in appeals, depending on Oregon precedent, but I agree with the general argument: grandfathering in some individuals, as Prop 13 in California does with property taxes or NYC’s rent control does, utterly fails the spirit of equal-protection clauses even if those other examples have been found legal. Paying a “Johnny come lately” tax may sound fine to long-term residents, but some of us just can’t help that we weren’t born in the right place at the right time.
Speaking of Prop 13, the local anti-property tax groups appear to be looking to it for inspiration. The long-promised tax swap apparently isn’t enough for them; they’d rather go the extreme route.
“But under [Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’] neighborhood-choice plan, so many requests for new schools were approved by the district that it now buses more children than it ever bused for integration.” Tim Simmons writing in the “News & Observer”:http://www.newsobserver.com/news/education/gap/schooldiversity/story/1242988p-7354725c.html in 2003 on Charlotte’s school choice plan
The Onion offers up these solutions to high gas prices:
While the Mandatory Car Ownership Act might be fiction, its local counterpart, the pesky minimum parking requirements set forth by zoning, effectively ensures the same result. Renowned anti-parking guru Donald Shoup will speak about how to properly price parking — or even recognize that it’s a good that _can_ be priced — “here in Chicago on 2 November”:http://metroplanning.org/press/press.asp?objectID=2948.
Excerpts from his show-stopping presentation at APA in San Francisco:
bq. [P]arking policies are important and that our current policies are exactly the opposite of what they should be. Parking is important because the average car is parked 95 percent of the time and parking is mispriced because it’s free to the driver 99 percent of the time… Every year the U.S. spends about as much to subsidize parking as we spend for Medicare or national defense. The financial costs are enormous, but so are the many other hidden costs imposed on cities and the environment.
bq. Off-street parking requirements encourage us to drive wherever we go because we know we can usually park free when we get there. Eighty-seven percent of all trips in the U.S. are now made by car, and only 1.5 percent by public transit. American motor vehicles by themselves consume one-eighth of the world’s total oil production. Off-street parking requirements help explain why the U.S. has 1.2 motor vehicles per licensed driver and slightly more than one vehicle per person of driving age…
bq. The second policy I recommend is that cities should charge fair market prices for curb parking, by which I mean the lowest price that will achieve about a 15 percent vacancy rate for curb spaces so that anyone can always find an available space wherever they go. Charging fair market prices for curb parking will bring parking into the economy, like housing, food, gasoline and just about everything else we buy. Most markets depend on prices to allocate resources, so much so that it’s hard to imagine they could operate in any other way. Nevertheless, cities have tried to manage parking almost entirely without prices.
bq. The third policy I recommend, to make charging market prices for curb parking politically feasible, is that cities should spend the resulting curb parking revenue to pay for neighborhood public investment, such as sidewalk repair, public security and putting the overhead buyers underground. When nonresidents to park at the curb, and residents receive all the benefits, residents will begin to see the curb parking through the eyes of a parking lot owner. Political support for a policy of charging market prices for curb parking does not depend on a belief that market prices for curb parking will benefit the whole city, such as by reducing air pollution and traffic congestion — which it will do. Rather, support will come from the selective benefits the curb parking revenue can finance in the neighborhoods that let nonresidents park on the streets. And so the improvement in traffic congestion, the reduction of traffic congestion, the better air will be like regional icing on the neighborhood cake.
bq. I think most people do think that free parking at home is built into the social contract. In the proposed residential parking benefit districts, the residents would park free just as they do in the current permit parking districts. But in many permit districts, there is a lot of vacant curb space during the daytime when the residents are away at work. Some cities allow non-residents to buy daytime permits in these districts — no more than four permits per block and only in blocks that have vacant curb space. And if the non-residents’ payments for these daytime permits go to fix up that block where the nonresidents park — to repair their sidewalks and trim their street trees and put their wires underground — the residents would see, well, yes, it’s like Monty Python’s idea to solve Britain’s economic problems by taxing foreigners living abroad.
bq. I think that people are paying to park in a place that they want to be, rather than in a place where they can merely park free. I think that cities should aim to be great places where people are willing to pay to park at the curb rather than mediocre places where the only reason you’ll come is if the parking is free. And that really describes much of the United States. It’s a very degraded public environment where nobody will come unless they can park free a few feet from the front door.
Posted to the new Guess Where Chicago pool on Flickr, my latest pastime:
This 1880s planned community maintains a remarkable degree of unity. Although the Old surrounding neighborhood has well more than its share of party walls, few of its streets were built by a single hand — and the others were built a century hence, by which point architecture had declined considerably as an art. Its beguiling intimacy is deceiving: neighboring streets are narrower still, but have lower buildings, fewer trees, and even smaller front yards.
Today’s “most popular” article at the Trib is a letter by Thomas Condon with some South Side imperialist pablum:
This is an essential part of the difference between the North Side and the South Side. The North Side is home to the more “tender” Chicagoans, those latte-swilling, status-car-driving dandies who think that Lincoln Park is a tough neighborhood. Many are just enjoying their “urban experience” for a few years before moving back to Schaumburg and buying the inevitable minivan.
The South Side is where the real meat of Chicago resides. These are the people and neighborhoods who built America with steel mills, won World War II with manufacturing and continue to supply the real muscle for Chicago’s economic engine.
And we aren’t moving to Schaumburg. Ever.
Well, no. The north side and downtown areas successfully reinvented themselves for the post-industrial economy, but not the south side — which still suffers from higher unemployment and lower incomes. Low per-capita income doesn’t sound like “muscle for Chicago’s economic engine.”
And while they might not move to Schaumburg (hardly anyone does, as it’s a business only town), white south siders WILL move to Oak Lawn or Bolingbrook or Olympia Fields, and black south siders will move to Park Forest or University Park. Indeed, millions have — how else did huge swaths of the south side end up so denuded and depopulated?
Gristmill’s David Roberts writes that linking public health to sprawl, via New Urbanism (and citing a so-so Newsweek article on the subject), will also help to bring the politics of global warming down to a level that most people can comprehend–their health:
The broad public movement to fight global warming that everybody’s waiting for is never gonna happen. The subject is too abstract, too distant, too tinged with guilt and fear and sacrifice. What might happen is a public movement behind a healthier lifestyle, safer, more compact cities, and a turn from insatiable materialism to more rooted, community-based pleasures.
1. John McCormick in the Trib reports that the CTA will locate smart-card recharge boxes (which are about shoebox sized) “at [roughly] area currency exchanges and convenience stores” for a mere 1.8% commission. This will greatly help to decrease the social cost of raising cash fares while further spreading the benefits of Chicago Card.
Now, how about allowing daily or weekly passes on Chicago Card? I wonder if the software is smart enough to do an “auto day pass”: once you’ve taken $5 ($6?) of travel within a day, every additional trip could be free or refunded after the fact. (I understand that London’s Oyster smartcard has a “daily price cap” that ensures riders never pay more than a day-pass price for one day’s travel; any additional trips are free. This mechanism requires just a software routine to total each day’s usage and credit back the “overpayment.” For instance, say a trip is $2 and the day pass is $6; the fourth trip of the day could either be free, or the $2 would be refunded to the account at the end of the day.) Again, day passes are good for the system since they encourage more-profitable off-peak travel and reward the system’s best customers — and smart cards are good for the system since they are easier on equipment, do away with cash handling, and speed boarding.
These days, if I want to make a side trip (go to Chinatown for lunch, stop by a movie after work and then go home — all of which involve off-peak travel), I need to remember to grab one of the “1-Day Fun Passes” I have at home before leaving for the day — and forego the benefits of Chicago Card all day. I also need to remember to buy new passes, which seem to only be available at the visitor info centers and the airports. More likely, I’ll bike to work instead and thus avoid the marginal travel cost for the side trips. A “daily price cap” would solve this dilemma and make me (and many others) more likely to choose transit for these off-peak, non-work trips. A daily price cap would solve this.
2. Greg Hinz reports in “Crain’s”:http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=18087 that Lori Healey, presently a partner at Perkins & Will, will be DPD’s new commissioner. Healey was co-chair of MPC’s Urban Development Committee during my stint there, and consistently struck me as a dedicated, tough-nosed, and knowledgeable advocate: a good negotiator and facilitator. That’s pretty much what the city needs at DPD.
HNK found a reference in the Chicago city code that bars het dating services. As posted to craigslist:
No person shall advertise… to act as agent, go-between… between a man and a woman, for any fee… for the purpose of promoting a marriage or an acquaintanceship intended to result in marriage.
Heck, that’s even what the Lincoln Park Trixie Society is about! The fine’s $100-$200, and another part of the same law specifically states “a man and a woman.” Yay, gay people!
[The uptick in posting volume lately comes from finishing off many unfinished drafts and the like. Here’s one example.]
The auto industry spent $15.79B to advertise in calendar year 2002 or $9.78B in the first half of 2003, and that’s just for the auto industry (not including tires, gasoline, etc.) — more than the next three largest ad-buying industries (finance, telecom, restaurants) combined. In fact, almost $2.3 billion was spent just by the automakers to advertise specific models of SUVs in 2002. The Big Three will spend over $6 billion on ads this year, out of a $130B total market.
Compare:
* Total Dept of Ed: $63 billion allocated
* Title I: $12.35B (grants for poor school districts)
* IDEA: $9.5B (grants for special ed)
* Head Start: $6.8B
* Annual cost of providing basic education access for all developing countries: $6 billion (UNICEF 1997)
* Reproductive health for all women in developing countries: $12 billion
* Basic health and nutrition in developing countries: $13 billion
* Cosmetics sales in USA, 1997: $8 billion
* Adult bicycle sales at bike shops in USA, 1998: $1.2 billion
* Overall bicycle market, including accessories and clothing in USA, 1998: $5.6 billion
Advertising, of course, is just a way to manufacture demand.
_Sources_
Ad spending: TNS/CMR Market Intelligence 2003, Keith Bradsher, _High and Mighty_
Federal budget: FY05 administration submitted budget
International needs/wants: UNDP Int’l Human Development Report 1999
Bicycle spending: Bicycle Retailer News
west north 