Planning: general Planning terminology that YOU coined

[estromberg]

When I worked in my County zoning department, we had the RA district. It stood for Rural Agricultural. It was a residential district of at least 2.5ac that allowed horses. I liked to call it Horsey Residential.

 

[Maister]

Forensic planning. When one uses clues and guesswork identifying elements in the built environment to determine how something likely developed.

 

[Lowland]

Forensic planning. When one uses clues and guesswork identifying elements in the built environment to determine how something likely developed.

I feel like this is an under-appreciated part of the job in many communities. I find myself doing a lot of research/deep file delving to determine what administrative decisions or old zoning ordinances were used to allow some of the wilder nonconforming uses to happen. I like this terminology.

 

[Faust_Motel]

I feel like this is an under-appreciated part of the job in many communities. I find myself doing a lot of research/deep file delving to determine what administrative decisions or old zoning ordinances were used to allow some of the wilder nonconforming uses to happen. I like this terminology.

It's especially critical when you work in a community that has some local planning lore about why certain things are the way they are, or even more likely, some misconceptions about what was promised at the charette back in 1990 and why the building proposed today doesn't meet that promise.

 

[Dan]

Forensic planning. When one uses clues and guesswork identifying elements in the built environment to determine how something likely developed.

I like it!

My term for an otherwise nameless kind of architectural style that's very popular locally among the crunchy crowd -- Appalachian Rustic Revival. There's several "artisanal" bearded builder types that specialize in the style here. If I was going to describe it, the style looks something more like what you might see in a West Virginia holler than an upstate New York subdivision, yet that's where you'll find some of them. The cladding is usually unstained wood, which seems to be treated in a way to look like it's had decades of hard weathering a few years after construction. Roofs are usually metal. Landscaping is naturalistic, or just nonexistent -- just a house plopped down among the scrub. Driveways are gravel or dirt.

Here's an example I pulled from a real estate Web site. This house was built in 2012. I'm not kidding.

These units were built in 2006.

This one got its CO a few months ago. It's is a definitely-out-of-place new build in the subdivision where I live. If it weren't for the woods and wetlands in the "open space" behind my house, this would be in my backyard. It's across the street from a 4,000 square foot Georgian/Colonial revival house. I'm a lone voice in the wilderness in thinking this ... uhh, left a lot to be desired. Everybody else defends this as being "sustainable".

Here's another new build Appalachian Rustic Revival house., with a Cape Cod form, and no metal roof. It will look a lot different in a year or two, after the weathering kicks in.

A Craftsman bungalow variant.

 

[Maister]

I like it!

My term for an otherwise nameless kind of architectural style that's very popular locally among the crunchy crowd -- Appalachian Rustic Revival. There's several "artisanal" bearded builder types that specialize in the style here. If I was going to describe it, the style looks something more like what you might see in a West Virginia holler than an upstate New York subdivision, yet that's where you'll find some of them. The cladding is usually unstained wood, which seems to be treated in a way to look like it's had decades of hard weathering a few years after construction. Roofs are usually metal. Landscaping is naturalistic, or just nonexistent -- just a house plopped down among the scrub. Driveways are gravel or dirt.

Here's an example I pulled from a real estate Web site. This house was built in 2012. I'm not kidding.

View attachment 48889

Nonsense. It's got a new metal roof, but clearly that poorly maintained dwelling was constructed circa 1918.

 

[Dan]

Social distancing sidewalk: a roadway (or part of one) temporarily closed off to vehicle traffic, to allow more distance between pedestrians, and/or larger outdoor dining areas at restaurants.

Ronawalk could also work.

 

[Faust_Motel]

Social distancing sidewalk: a roadway (or part of one) temporarily closed off to vehicle traffic, to allow more distance between pedestrians, and/or larger outdoor dining areas at restaurants.

Ronawalk could also work.

View attachment 49090

Stupid Hyannis and their stupid two-lanes-one-way Main Street.

 

[Faust_Motel]

Stupid Hyannis and their stupid two-lanes-one-way Main Street.

I used to live off two-lanes-one-way South Street that runs parallel. So the system ruins Main Steer for pedestrians while also making a whole other street a big pain to navigate at the same time. They used to close main Street off entirely to cars on Thursday nights in the summer, but people got all "bbbbut the cars and /parking/" and then that went away. Too bad. Maybe 'rona will bring it back.

 

[Dan]

Stupid Hyannis and their stupid two-lanes-one-way Main Street.

Same thing in Ithaca. So many streets were made one-way in the 1950s and 1960s with the intent of reliving traffic congestion. The result: some streets are speedways, and there's far fewer options to get from Point A to Point B on the city's grid. In many cases, a destination one block away can be a 10 minute drive, thanks to the maze of one-ways.

 

[Gedunker]

This is the two way restoration we did in my city: LEO - New Albany. It has been very well received, except by the few outsiders that rarely come into the city anyway. And, they, really, were the folks we were actually targeting - the folks who just wanted to drive through as fast as they possibly could on their way somewhere else.

 

[B'lieve]

Great one! Along similar lines, I've used urbburb a few times to describe a suburban city or town that has the feeling of a very dense pre-WWII urban neighborhood. Examples of urbburbs include:

Lakewood, Ohio (Cleveland)
University City, Missouri (St. Louis)
Cleveland Heights, Ohio (Cleveland)
Oak Park, Illinois (Chcago)

The term excludes industrial satellite communities; Niagara Falls, New York; Newark, New Jersey, Gary, Indiana and the like.
....
On a lighter note, there's The Chosen Suburb: the one suburban community where many Jews in a region aspire to live. It's usually an affluent community that is also home to many of the Jewish institutions in the metropolitan area. Some Chosen Suburbs:

Williamsville, New York (Buffalo)
Beachwood, Ohio (Cleveland)
West Bloomfield, Michigan (Detroit) (took the title from Southfield)

Adding to your list of "Chosen Suburbs": Pikesville, Maryland (Baltimore)

And parts of Dundalk, Towson, Parkville, Brooklyn Park more-or-less fit the "urbburb" bill around here.

No "Power Suburb" here, though, b/c there can be only one, and although Towson fits the description otherwise (corporate offices, affluence, soccer moms), it doesn't really loom over the suburbs here; too much competition in both the job-center and soccer-mom departments from White Marsh/Perry Hall, greater Annapolis, Columbia, Hunt Valley-Cockeysville-Timonium corridor, Owings Mills/Reisterstown corridor, Woodlawn (jobs only), Arundel Mills area, and the Bel Air blob up in Hazzard County.

 

[Dan]

Here's a name for an otherwise hard-to-classify architectural style: Madeiterranean. I call it that because there was an enclave full of these houses, where most of the homeowners were alleged "made men", just across the city line from my childhood neighborhood

The Madeiterranean style seemed to emerge in the 1960s. It was most popular at the fringes of New York City's outer boroughs, but it was also a staple in some move-up northern suburbs of Buffalo. Early examples have a simple rectangular form, facades of pink or yellow brick, low pitched hip roofs with large eaves, palladian windows or trim on the front facade, and "fancy" two-story entry foyers that often have circular staircases. Here's a few examples from suburban Buffalo.

Madeiterranean dupleses.

The trademark foyer 𝓭'𝓮𝓵𝓮𝓰𝓪𝓷𝓬𝓮.

It's easy to find Made-iterranean time capsules on real estate Web sites.

Outside of the NYC area, the Madeiterranean style seemed to peak between 1965 and 1985, but it didn't completely die off in the following decades. The style became even more popular in NYC's outer boroughs, though, especially on Staten Island. Today's Made-iterranean houses are far more in-your-face, but they still have many traits of the originals.

An example of low-rent Madeiterranean houses, in Queens (Rafael Herrin-Ferri)

The Madeiterranean style is an example of ethnotecture, another term I just made up, to describe out-of-character vernacular architectural styles that are popular among specific immigrant or ethnic groups in a region or country. Other American ethnotectural styles include the Bukharan houses of Queens, a close cousin of the Madeiterranean style; and the Persian Palaces of Beverly Hills, California.

 

[Faust_Motel]

I used to live off two-lanes-one-way South Street that runs parallel. So the system ruins Main Steer for pedestrians while also making a whole other street a big pain to navigate at the same time. They used to close main Street off entirely to cars on Thursday nights in the summer, but people got all "bbbbut the cars and /parking/" and then that went away. Too bad. Maybe 'rona will bring it back.

Well, at least hyannis did something for COVID:

 

[Shellac And Vinyl VelocitY]

Social distancing sidewalk: a roadway (or part of one) temporarily closed off to vehicle traffic, to allow more distance between pedestrians, and/or larger outdoor dining areas at restaurants.
Ronawalk could also work.

View attachment 49090

There already is a (rather new) coined term for:
"a roadway (or part of one) temporarily closed off to vehicle traffic, to allow more distance between pedestrians, and/or larger outdoor dining areas at restaurants."

The term is Open Street.

In New York City, the plan is called the "Open Streets Initiative".

The term "Open Streets" is already on Google Maps of NYC.
For example, this map of the Borough of Brooklyn has blue dots encircling a white-colored "stick figure pedestrian" to indicate an Open Street:

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.6583007,-74.0020184,13z/data=!4m3!15m2!1m1!1s%2Fg%2F11fv6n6gnv

If you zoom way up close to any of those blue dots, you can see the "path" of a specific Open Street.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Dan- This where someone, (a planner?), who thinks WAY outside the box might fit in:
Many influential New Yorkers can't stand the term "Open Streets" because it's vague and not entirely accurate. But nobody has coined a replacement term that has caught on.

(Many of us find ourselves saying, "Closed to Traffic", but that's also vague and somewhat inaccurate.)

The upshot:
It's still open season for re-coinage of the terms "Open Street" and "Open Streets Initiative".

 

[Dan]

Tollbound: an area that is impossible to drive to in some way without paying a toll.

For example, to get to the Buffalo, New York or Tulsa, Oklahoma metropolitan areas from the rest of the United States, using only limited access highways, paying a toll is unavoidable. The only way to avoid tolls is to use surface streets at some point in the journey. The Buffalo and Tulsa MSAs are the only two in the US that are tollbound in that sense.

 

[Shellac And Vinyl VelocitY]

Tollbound: an area that is impossible to drive to in some way without paying a toll.

For example, to get to the Buffalo, New York or Tulsa, Oklahoma metropolitan area from the rest of the United States, using only limited access highways, paying a toll is unavoidable. The only way to avoid tolls is to use surface streets at some point in the journey. The Buffalo and Tulsa MSAs are the only two in the US that are tollbound in that sense.

How giving Tollbound a partner=> Tollocked?

Tollocked: an area that is physically impossible to drive out of without paying a toll. (No way to avoid or circumvent it using 'back streets'.)

 

[Dan]

How giving Tollbound a partner=> Tollocked?

Great minds think alike.

I used to use "tolllocked" to describe the state of the Interstates in Buffalo and Tulsa. However, having three Ls in a row is kind of awkward, and the term "tollbound" just seems to roll off the tongue better. The Ironbound neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey also offers some precedent.

There is a way to get into Buffalo via a free, all-limited access highway route. However, it's not from the United States, and it only works in one direction -- the Queen Elizabeth Way, over the Peace Bridge across the Niagara River into Buffalo, and onto the mostly-free Niagara Thruway (I-190). As long as you don't cross onto Grand Island, there's no toll. There is the US Border Patrol checkpoint, though. If you're going from southern Ontario to Niagara County, you can take the QEW to the 405, and across the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge, where the expressway becomes the 190. Cross Grand Island into Erie County and Buffalo, though, and you have to pay a buck.

 

[mantrabean]

Heard visual sustainability. Should be taken seriously, cities are looking like the nightmare Jacobs never cared to have. Not to be confused with the farty-farty Greta crowd though...

 

[Dan]

$hitsburg: a community that openly embraces LULUs (locally unwanted land uses), low quality development, and the accompanying visual and environmental pollution, as either a deliberate economic development strategy, or out of sheer desperation. Key indicators include several or all of the following: random acrid odors throughout (and beyond) the community, lots of truck stops and terminals, plenty of scrap yards and metal recycling operations, the kind of heavy industry most zoning code don't allow in their heavy industrial district, "adult entertainment", huge signs and billboards, oversized and often empty parking lots with zero landscaping, little access management of any kind along major roads, a landfill as the highest elevation in town, and a disproportionately large number of small, often utilitarian starter homes or mobile homes among the housing stock.

Municipalities I'd give that title to include:

* A bunch of the Illinois-side Metro East suburbs of St. Louis: National City, Brooklyn, Venice, Granite City, Washington Park, East St. Louis, and especially Sauget.

* West Memphis, Arkansas: trucking and mechanical commercial use capital of the Mid-South.

* Gary, Indiana: post-Hatcher era.

* River Rouge, Michigan. Zug Island and so much more. Even the Wikipedia entry for River Rouge makes a LULU recruitment pitch.