New and Old #168
Friday roundup and commentary
Can a ‘Not Charlotte’ Recipe Revive a Region?, New York Times, Santul Nerkar, May 2, 2024
At the same time, some residents and local leaders who welcome the new industries worry about maintaining the area’s character, lest it become like the rapidly growing — and expensive — sprawls elsewhere in the South.
“We don’t want to be Charlotte,” said Marvin Price, executive vice president of economic development at the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce, referring to the banking center 100 miles down Interstate 85. “We want to be the best version of Greensboro.”
It all depends what that means.
The piece is about the arrival of high-tech manufacturing jobs to this old tobacco and furniture hub, and how the people and the place will adapt and benefit. It’s a good read.
After two decades of living in North America, I was hit by the realization that the communist-era Prague apartment of my early childhood might have been the most luxurious place I’ve ever lived. Although many of my later Toronto and Montreal flats had more opulent lobbies, finishes, amenities, and landscaping, the simple, prefabricated Czech panel building boasted a dual aspect suite, welcoming sunlight — and cross-ventilation — from two sides of the building. In Canada and the United States, this type of home is a rarity; one that fetches a hefty premium.
In American English, a “dual aspect suite” is an apartment with windows on two or more walls. It turns out, maybe not surprisingly, that the scarcity of this floorplan type in the U.S. and Canada is due to regulation. Basically this has to do with the code element requiring multiple stairs/exits, which forces buildings to be larger and blocker (generally).
I believe this is what “single-stair reform” is about. But the building this article profiles manages to get those coveted dual aspect apartments by putting one of the required stairs/exits outside!
Designed by local practice Ædifica and situated on an irregularly shaped 38,000-square-metre site next to Jean-Duceppe Park, the two-building Cité Angus II is home to 88 condominiums, including large and multi-level suites that cater to the families often pushed out of Montreal’s urban core. What’s more, both volumes feature dual aspect apartments facing the inner courtyard and the surrounding streets. The key to the design? You can’t miss it.
Fun design-focused piece.
Remember That Time the EPA Killed the Sedan?, The New Republic, Kate Aronoff, March 22, 2024
Another piece about accidental and bad effects of regulation!
While federal regulators had distinguished between passenger and “non-passenger” vehicles since the 1970s, this Obama-era change amended U.S. corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards such that vehicles would be held to different emissions standards based on their size—specifically, the vehicle’s wheelbase multiplied by its track length (width). This meant that larger cars—those classified as light trucks—would be held to less stringent standards than passenger vehicles. What might sound like a wonky bureaucratic tweak has dramatically changed how Americans drive.
This is the good old light-truck loophole: make a passenger vehicle big enough, and it’s regulated as a “truck,” which is held to lower fuel efficiency standards than “cars.” I wrote about this once before.
Some will say, this is the car companies’ fault, not the regulators. I guess? But are you more concerned about assigning blame or figuring out what happened?
The new chair of Community Board 5, fending off charges that his housing advocacy group had illicitly infiltrated the board and maneuvered him into the chair, sought to calm his colleagues at an emergency meeting, but found himself repeatedly overruled by most of the rest of the board.
This is a great piece of hyperlocal reporting that gives you a taste of how insane and conspiratorial local community meetings can get, and how different that process actually is from anything resembling real input from the community, fully understood.
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And that "new chair" of CB5 was voted out recently, in a close election, after his main rivals all quit the board right before being investigated for odd dealings with a secret donor and having closed-door meetings (a violation of state open meetings law), for making anti-trans comments, or various other shenanigans. And this is all to prevent development around Penn Station, an area where it would be reasonable to build some dense housing options. They are thoroughly full of nonsense.
"Some will say, this is the car companies’ fault, not the regulators. I guess? But are you more concerned about assigning blame or figuring out what happened?"
E. All of the Above: regulators, manufacturers, and consumers.
It's good to know how things happened. It can lead to understanding better. Whatever the causes, I don't see a solution until we remove the political third rail from regulating cars and driving.