Miscellaneous

From Cyburbian Habanero: In a recent conversation another person, a planner, stated they felt the setbacks imposed on a particular tract limited the "highest and best use" of the property (the setbacks left more than enough room for development but the developer wanted to cram more into the lot). My question is this: as planners should our focus ever be on the "highest and best use"? Should we be concerned with getting developers the highest/best use out of their property for potential tax benefits? Thoughts? Ideas?

I'm not sold on thinking I need to look out for the developer's best interest as I work for the municipalicy. Then again, when thinking of master planned developments, it seems like planners often jump to the "let's make this more than what it could be", ideas of integrating uses and trying to inflict so-called mixed use ideas on a development.

From Cyburbian Dan: The books and writings of James Howard Kunstler are a popular topic on the Cyburbia Forums. A search for "Kunstler" alone will reveal hundreds of posts about the man and his works.

In cooperation with KunstlerCast, Cyburbia offers the opportunity to pick Mr. Kunstler's brain about the form and shaping of the built environment, life after Peak Oil, or any other related topic. We'll pass on the questions to Mr, Kunstler, where they'll be answered on the KunstlerCast podcast. Transcripts of his answers will also posted on Cyburbia. If you're not a Cyburbia Forums member, please join if you want the opportunity to ask Mr. Kunstler a question or two.

From Cyburbian donk: I have a weird situation and could use advice. I am taking a real estate class. The prof is an architect, the TA is a developer. The two of them continually denegrate the role of the planner and the professionalism of municipal staff. The prof actually said to me that planners have no role or reason to exist as we are just paper pushers.

Both the prof and TA also say things that are patently false OR wrong (misnaming and misinterpreting regs as prime example). I sit and bite my tongue in class (to a certain point), but seeing that class mates take what they say as gospel, and write down the errors I am becoming concerned.

Great Places in America (http://www.planning.org/greatplaces/) is a new designation program of the American Planning Association, which honoring places of exemplary character, quality, and planning. The program recognizes "10 Great Streets" and "10 Great Neighborhoods", and starting in 2008, public spaces. Designated neighborhoods and streets are defined by several characteristics, including good design, functionality, sustainability, and community involvement.

Sapling (http://www.sapling.info) is a UK-based site that includes, at the time this was written, 1,100 annotated and reviewed links to architecture, planning and landscape-related websites throughout the world.

The intent of Urban Age (http://www.urban-age.net/), "a worldwide investigation into the future of cities", is to shape the thinking and practice of urban leaders and sustainable urban development. Urban Age is structured around international and multidisciplinary events and research supporting the creation of a new urban agenda for global cities. The Urban Age agenda links the physical to the economic, environmental and social, providing urbanists with the tools to apply, tailor and refine innovation.

From Cyburbian michaelskis: I have been thinking about the question of what is the real difference between Chicago and Detroit. Both of them have long histories, phenomenal architecture, are the largest cities in their states, have a waterfront, have a diversified economic base and have unlimited potential.

Yet one is booming and the other has lost most of its population over the past few decades. I think that the only real difference is the perception of the two cities. If the perception of Detroit changed to that of Chicago, then the development in the city would be nothing like anyone has ever seen.

What do you think are the real differences between the two cites. Why? What caused these differences?

From Cyburbian ssnyderjr: How does a City go about deregulating (may not be the right word) the electric, so that they may start a municipal electric program? We would be very interested in how this happens, especially at the beginning stages. It seems like any nearby cities that offer municipal electric and the commensurate lower rates have better odds of attracting a variety of businesses and may be a deal-maker. This incentive often sways developers toward a city and keeps residents happy. Any suggestions on where to begin - planning stages - would be helpful.

The Harveyville Project (http://harveyvilleproject.com) is a creative residence, retreat, and workshop getaway, surrounded by the distance and alarming beauty of eastern Kansas. The Project occupies two former school buildings in the rural town, where reclaimed classrooms are rented out for $15 a day to resident artists.

A SimCity-like sandbox or "god game", Freetrain (http://freetrain.sourceforge.net) is inspired by the A-Train series of games which focuses on a combination of train and business simulation. Freetrain is open source software and licensed under a combination of the LGPL and GPL. Unfortunately, it's available only for Windows, but versions for other operating systems are planned.

The Geograph British Isles project web site (http://www.geograph.org.uk) aims to collect geographically representative photographs and information for every square kilometer of the UK and the Republic of Ireland. The site currently contains over 400,000 images covering about 180,000 Ordnance Survey grid squares.

OpenTTD (http://www.openttd.org) is a clone of the Microprose game "Transport Tycoon Deluxe". It attempts to mimic the original game as closely as possible while extending it with new features. OpenTTD is an open source program, free for download and licensed under the GNU General Public License.

(Cyburbia Forums original post)

From Cyburbian modonnell15: What are some incentives that cities use to try to attract or to retain families with children under 15 in the city?

(Photo by wockerjabby.)

Embrace both your inner graphic design geek and mass transit geek at the same time! Metros From the World (http://metro.b3co.com) is what it is; a growing collection of logos (162 at the time this was posted) for metro systems around the world. Alas, no Buffalo Metro Rail; their oddball horizontal-oriented logo probably doesn't fit.

(Cyburbia Forums original post)

From Cyburbian JNL: We've had some interesting debate here this week about the concept of labelling food and other products according to the distance they've travelled to market. This has been prompted by: "a move by Britain's largest supermarket chain to label goods imported by air [snip]. Supermarket chain Tesco this month unveiled a £500 million ($1439 million) strategy to cut carbon emissions and persuade its customers to buy environmentally friendly products. Tesco said it planned to label food with details of its carbon footprint, showing consumers the amount of carbon emitted during the production, transport and consumption of each of the 70,000 different products it sells." (Full article)