Oh yeah I am not anti-sidewalk. There’s a strain of conservative ~urbanism that says the only thing you need for kids to be able to walk places is sidewalks

This observation comes through clearly when you compare how English and American children get to school. People often point to the utter collapse in the share of American children walking or cycling to school—from over 40 percent in 1969 to under 11 percent today—as evidence of their declining independence. But while the United Kingdom is certainly no free-range paradise, nearly half (46 percent) of children in England get to school on foot or bike, a figure that hasn’t budged much over the past few decades. It is likely no coincidence that, on average, English children live quite a bit closer to school than American kids do (2.5 miles vs. 4.4 miles, respectively). To put a finer point on it, more than 4 in 5 American kids live 3 or more miles from their school—a distance that vanishingly few British kids are walking. We can quibble all day about what age a child ought to be able to traverse such and such a distance, but it would be silly to suggest that parents ought not factor distance into the equation at all. All else equal, the further a shop or school or park is located from a child’s home, the older a child must generally be to make the trip alone.

Thank you @stephhmurray.bsky.social for stating the blindingly obvious clearly. For kids to have independence to go places independently, you need a certain density of destinations that doesn't come from being sure that single-family neighborhoods have sidewalks: thedispatch.com/article/heli...

"we’re all anti-unfunded IZ"

Can't say I foresaw the urbanist choir ending up here 10 years ago.

Since I’m preaching to the urbanist choir and we’re all anti-unfunded IZ, I’ll take this a step forward: funded IZ does too, it just changes the consequence – instead of destroying production, it destroys your city budget. We got a hint of this with NYC’s CityFHEPS voucher program

Works in Progress ships from Twinsburg 🤯

I opened this expecting a formal invitations to Twins Day, but this is good too @worksinprogress.bsky.social

The weather is A+, so of course the house is full of the sweet sounds of “SHUT THE DOOR!!”

That is my favorite piece of building code trivia. Have we talked about Married to the Mouse/have you read it?

Me and smelly from nofx with popcorn buckets on our heads

Just a couple of bucketheads at the NOFX documentary screening. See if there's one near you that hasn't sold out yet! www.40yearsoffuckinup.com

Lol the code will be short

If a locality or state wants to try the UK strategy of giving neighbors the authority to upzone themselves, by all means I'm for it. But not to the exclusion of continuing to set limits on local control.

💯

I'd say DC, MD, and VA land use authority

Where Are All the Cranes? A California YIMBY hopepill.

And there's some good news from @mnolangray.bsky.social that California's laws beyond just its ADU laws are showing up in increased permitting rates: open.substack.com/pub/mnolangr...

But empirically in the U.S., we usually get more supply and affordability when larger jurisdictions are making the decisions.

The UK shows us that things could be worse than local zoning that restricts what property owners can build--property owners could have no rights to build anything without special approval.

I mostly agree with this @mattyglesias.bsky.social take that U.S. YIMBYs should stay the course on working to make land use decisions (and probably also building code decisions) at larger geographic scales.

<em>Real Estate Economics</em> | AREUEA Journal | Wiley Online Library Increased energy efficiency in buildings is essential to reducing carbon emissions and addressing climate change. Massachusetts' Green Communities Act of 2008, aiming for a 50% reduction in carbon em...

This paper on the Mass energy code has a much better identification strategy and finds the expected affordability effect: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/....

Who Exactly Are the "Girlbosses?" If there is a big group of useless career women who are pulling off the scam of the century, surely they'd be easier to describe.

The “girlboss” who also has a bullshit DEI job does not exist www.cartoonshateher.com/p/who-exactl...

I agree! I think it might be the case that the wrong org won the race to become the nationwide model code

We certainly order delivery now and again in a pinch or for fun, but I would be shocked if any significant share of routine delivery app users (say people who use it more than once a week) have kids

I think so

The harried dual-income households are buying all the bagged salad because they don't want to take 5 minutes to put the ingredients together but they also don't want to get scurvy

Also, I'm highly skeptical that it's harried dual-income households ordering all the DoorDash. I think that's moreso a single person thing, especially if the outcome of interest is trips generated rather than total spending.

The problem with immigrants is that they allow women to get jobs outside their homes and that they take men's jobs 🧐

In other words, when supply is fixed (due to the strait being closed), tax cuts are less likely to be passed onto consumers.

Gas stations are *more likely to raise their own prices to compensate*. If they set prices too low, you will literally get shortages.

I guess farms count as destinations if the kids trespass on them

Did it have an open campus? One thing that was formative in my high school experience was being able to walk places off campus with friends for lunch or free periods. Do you think you missed out on that with such a car-oriented schoo?

I’d also argue that plenty of foods people would never deride as slop bowls actually are slop bowls: pho, pozole, the meze platter is the original slop bowl, etc.

I love a good slop bowl for a workday lunch, and I’d argue that they are healthier and tastier than plenty of convenient workday lunches that were on offer pre-slop bowl.