New and Old #132
Friday roundup and commentary
Minneapolis cannot proceed with 2040 Plan, court rules, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Susan Du, September 5, 2023
A Hennepin County judge has again ruled Minneapolis must immediately cease implementation of its 2040 comprehensive plan, which has been in effect for the past three years. The city now has 60 days to revert back to its 2030 Plan, according to the order. The city has said it might appeal.
“This court finds that any ongoing implementation of the residential development portions of the City’s 2040 Plan is an ongoing violation of [the Minnesota Environmental Rights Act],” wrote Judge Joseph Klein, who has been presiding over an environmental lawsuit challenging the city’s pro-development ambitions since 2018. “Plaintiffs have outlined numerous environmental impairments that are likely to result by virtue of the full implementation of the 2040 Plan. The court finds that such damage to the environment would be an irreparable harm to the environment, the protection of which is viewed by this state as being of paramount concern.”
This is not zoning, per se, though the 2040 Plan involved zoning reform, most notably eliminating the city’s singe-family zoning. The idea of environmental laws being used to stop the densification of an existing city is basically absurd. As we say here in Northern Virginia, one tree saved in Arlington is 50 trees cut down in Prince William County. Yes, green space is an amenity and we should keep some in dense areas so people can benefit from it, but that’s different from an environmental argument.
The meta-issue here, though, is that the process is so thick, and there are so many veto points, that a city can no longer even freely rewrite its own zoning code within the legal process for doing that. This is of a piece with everything else that drags on interminably these days, and it contributes to this feeling of malaise, that America can’t do things anymore.
You read, for example, about the construction of skyscrapers or the building of rail lines or spurs, a century or more ago, and these things just got done. They take years, and seem to always involve cost overruns, now. A lot of what animates urbanists is a desire to inject some vitality and dynamism back into our building culture.
New York City Is About to Screw Up Congestion Pricing, Vice, Aaron Gordon, September 11, 2023
With all these plans, you could be excused for thinking New York is doing congestion pricing—a potentially transformative policy that would be a first in the nation—right by not only charging drivers to access some of the densest, most valuable land in the world, but also giving them alternatives. Unfortunately, New York isn’t doing that, and in fact looks set to completely screw up congestion pricing so badly it may discredit the policy in a way that makes it harder for other cities to adopt it. Rather than approaching it as a lynchpin to a wide-ranging effort to reshape Manhattan’s relationship to the private car, congestion pricing has become solely about money—specifically, paying off enough of the credit-card bill New York has run up with a variety of ill-conceived and poorly-executed projects that it can get more credit cards….
New York is about to screw up congestion pricing, turning what ought to be a cornerstone of a transformative suite of policies that re-imagines what the densest urban area in the country looks and feels like into little more than a glorified toll.
This is really important. Congestion pricing is not a punitive measure, to punish motorists for driving. It’s about acknowledging the high value of urban-core real estate, and that driving and parking is a poor use of that value. But it feels punitive without good alternatives.
This is a very good read, from someone who supports the congestion-pricing vision but sees many defects in New York’s coming implementation.
Let the Building Be the Sign, Terremoto, Anthony Carfello, January 13, 2018
Growing to thousands of restaurants worldwide, Taco Bell reduced its branded architecture further. The bells and arches were powerful enough—in print, on video, or as audio through its “bong” sound, used since 1989—that planning a specific building to physically realize them became an unnecessary cost. Taco Bell opted to integrate these previously built forms into degrees of branding that could easily up-holster newer locations and designate any place as a link in the chain. Since the mid-1990s, new Taco Bell locations have been no more than stucco boxes with signage referencing an arch shape, fake bricks glued to the facade, and bell logos. After 1995, Taco Bell began to “co-brand” with other global chains Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut, using only half of a stucco box.
Early Taco Bells are now curios of building typology. Most of the 1960s and ’70s buildings have become ruins of the first era of the Bell Empire, available for lease to new restaurants and other businesses taking advantage of heavily trafficked suburban streets. No place promotes the fact that it used to be a Taco Bell. Architectural details are sometimes renewed as “Mexican”—especially if housing a Mexican-themed restaurant—or become simply “Spanish style,” often times camouflaged or repressed with paint jobs, new signage, or a simple refusal to acknowledge the obvious.
I love this kind of thing, as you know. This is a long, interesting piece about the evolution of roadside architecture and its close relationship with advertising, focusing on Taco Bell. It’s a fun read.
DNA preserved in a fossilized horse tooth found 1,200 miles away in the Caribbean may lend credence to this supposedly mythical shipwreck. In a study published today in the journal PLOS One, researchers posit that the tooth belonged to a cousin of the ponies roving Virginia and Maryland’s barrier islands….
Chincoteague itself sits at a treacherous stretch of the mid-Atlantic that is crisscrossed by hazardous shoals, he says. Evidence of shipwrecks, including several colonial-age vessels, often wash ashore during winter storms.
America has its history too. Read the whole fascinating thing.
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