urbanSTL

Battery power is great for small city yards (~1hr use) but not nearly long enough for a commercial lawn service.

Good, in depth read from Reuters on some of the transportation challenges Austin is facing as its boom continues: 

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/car-centric-austin-is-building-transit-will-anyone-ride-it-2021-10-19/

moorlander wrote: ↑

Oct 14, 2021

Battery power is great for small city yards (~1hr use) but not nearly long enough for a commercial lawn service.

Just invest in more batteries.

MarkHaversham wrote:

moorlander wrote: ↑

Oct 14, 2021

Battery power is great for small city yards (~1hr use) but not nearly long enough for a commercial lawn service.

Just invest in more batteries.

“Andrew Bray, vice president of the National Association of Landscape Professionals, told the Los Angeles Times that “a three-person landscaping crew will need to carry 30 to 40 fully charged batteries to power its equipment during a full day’s work,”

https://gvwire.com/2021/10/18/did-calif ... ban/?amp=1

moorlander wrote: ↑

Oct 21, 2021

MarkHaversham wrote:

moorlander wrote: ↑

Oct 14, 2021

Battery power is great for small city yards (~1hr use) but not nearly long enough for a commercial lawn service.

Just invest in more batteries.

“Andrew Bray, vice president of the National Association of Landscape Professionals, told the Los Angeles Times that “a three-person landscaping crew will need to carry 30 to 40 fully charged batteries to power its equipment during a full day’s work,”

https://gvwire.com/2021/10/18/did-calif ... ban/?amp=1

Those sound like pretty crappy batteries. 3 people * 8 hours = 24 hours of discharge even assuming they run their tools continuously and don't do any on-site charging. Think how many emissions that removes, given that lawnmowers are 30x as bad as cars. That's the equivalent of 720 daily commutes.

Tesla will come out with a lawnmower eventually.

Big mowers aren't two-stoke. At leas the John Deere riding lawn mower I used for the acre at my boyhood home wasn't. 

Laife Fulk wrote: ↑

Oct 28, 2021

Tesla will come out with a lawnmower eventually.

What would be the point of that?

Probably the same as the flamethrower.

Curbed - Michelle Wu Can Be America’s First Actual Honest-to-Goodness Climate Mayor

And, given her strong transportation record, paired with a visionary plan for streets that actually prioritize walking, biking, and transit — something few big cities in this country have been able to reliably deliver despite many highly publicized commitments to do so

https://www.curbed.com/2021/11/michelle ... mayor.html

Strong Towns - How to Solve Traffic Congestion: A Miracle in Louisville?

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/202 ... louisville

quincunx wrote: ↑

Dec 02, 2021

Strong Towns - How to Solve Traffic Congestion: A Miracle in Louisville?

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/202 ... louisville

Good read. Thanks. 

Found this to be an interesting read from Pete Saunders (I really like most of his stuff. Worth reading more pieces by him).

http://cornersideyard.blogspot.com/2020 ... h-for.html

“Relaxing zoning in cities or metro areas with a lower housing demand, which is the case for much of the Rust Belt and many low density Sun Belt cities, in my opinion would lead to a concentration of new housing development in the most in-demand neighborhoods within them, at the exclusion of other neighborhoods and suburbs. It would serve the affluent, it would be clustered, and would potentially decrease affordability and further increase inequality."

I assume most people in here to be YIMBYs and I consider myself to lean that direction. But I think hearing good faith perspectives is worthwhile.


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SeattleNative wrote: ↑

Dec 06, 2021

Found this to be an interesting read from Pete Saunders (I really like most of his stuff. Worth reading more pieces by him).

http://cornersideyard.blogspot.com/2020 ... h-for.html

“Relaxing zoning in cities or metro areas with a lower housing demand, which is the case for much of the Rust Belt and many low density Sun Belt cities, in my opinion would lead to a concentration of new housing development in the most in-demand neighborhoods within them, at the exclusion of other neighborhoods and suburbs. It would serve the affluent, it would be clustered, and would potentially decrease affordability and further increase inequality."

I assume most people in here to be YIMBYs and I consider myself to lean that direction. But I think hearing good faith perspectives is worthwhile.


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Is the current zoning rules leading to money going into the neighborhoods he fears would be left behind?  Are they not being excluded now?

mjbais1489 wrote: ↑

Dec 06, 2021

SeattleNative wrote: ↑

Dec 06, 2021

Found this to be an interesting read from Pete Saunders (I really like most of his stuff. Worth reading more pieces by him).

http://cornersideyard.blogspot.com/2020 ... h-for.html

“Relaxing zoning in cities or metro areas with a lower housing demand, which is the case for much of the Rust Belt and many low density Sun Belt cities, in my opinion would lead to a concentration of new housing development in the most in-demand neighborhoods within them, at the exclusion of other neighborhoods and suburbs. It would serve the affluent, it would be clustered, and would potentially decrease affordability and further increase inequality."

I assume most people in here to be YIMBYs and I consider myself to lean that direction. But I think hearing good faith perspectives is worthwhile.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Is the current zoning rules leading to money going into the neighborhoods he fears would be left behind?  Are they not being excluded now?

Totally agree.

Encouraging increased density in popular areas is great for quickly growing coastal cities, but a bad idea for slow-growth rust belt cities. THAT seems like a recipe for driving a deeper wedge between the haves and have nots. Keeping zoning restrictions on development in areas that it is most likely to occur seems like a great way to keep slow-growth cities slow growth.

I find this statement problematic:

• Relaxing zoning in cities or metro areas with a lower housing demand, which is the case for much of the Rust Belt and many low density Sun Belt cities, in my opinion would lead to a concentration of new housing development in the most in-demand neighborhoods within them, at the exclusion of other neighborhoods and suburbs. It would serve the affluent, it would be clustered, and would potentially decrease affordability and further increase inequality.

So, dense, popular urban neighborhoods should forego growth so as not to exclude investment in the suburbs? And, to mjbais' point, why should the same level of growth be expected to occur in "other neighborhoods" as those where people are already attracted? Real estate development is not a zero sum game that will either be spread evenly and equitably across a metro or concentrated in popular areas.

Also, there's a huge leap from having a concentration of new housing in in-demand neighborhoods and "serving the affluent", "potentially decreasing affordability" and "increasing inequality." Could increasing property values in some areas to 10-20x a City's average help subsidize schools and services in other parts of the city? Could it provide new and more accessible job opportunities (when compared to suburban neighborhoods) especially if both trendy/expensive and less popular/affordable areas are connected by transit? Is having some level of housing affordability issues (due to in-migration) as sign of a healthy city? Is having some level of inequality also a sign of a healthy city? If Miami has more inequality than Akron because it attracts Latin American multi-millionaires and Haitian, Cuban and Dominican immigrants looking for a better life, is that bad? 

Thanks for posting SeattleNative. I disagree with just about everything in that post, but to your point, always good and interesting to hear other, well-intentioned perspectives.

wabash wrote: ↑

Dec 02, 2021

quincunx wrote: ↑

Dec 02, 2021

Strong Towns - How to Solve Traffic Congestion: A Miracle in Louisville?

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/202 ... louisville

Good read. Thanks. 

Thanks for posting as well.   Interesting to go into comments and read about an alternate plan to reroute & open more waterfront face/property instead of building another bridge

So St. Louis alternate is pretty obvious in my mind
1) Eliminate raised section of freeway between Wash Ave & Cass Ave and replace with at grade blvd
2) Eads Bridge lane reduction, more ped/bike
3) Eliminate MLK bridge downtown.  
Easy peasy

Out here in the Bay Area they have embraced Express/HOV lanes to expand highway lanes,   Essentially pay a premium for the express lane and or get freebie if car pooling.    Works on honor system as the express lane is only separated by paint marks from the other lanes.    Maybe their is some camera, slash ticket in mail going on.   Not quite sure.    Tough to say what impact on traffic as work from home had huge impact on commute as well as hitting transit/BART hard

City life damages mental health in ways we’re just starting to understand

https://www.popsci.com/physical-surroundings-cities-mental-illness/

i have no idea how one writes an article like this without a single mention of the primary cause of all these health issues: the automobile. i expect the omission was intentional so as not to upset any of their advertisers or corporate sponsors. all in all a pretty dishonest piece.

EDIT: on second thought, it was probably written by an auto industry shill.

The big truck at the top make you wonder?

^ an advertisement? for whatever reason i'm not seeing any trucks on my browser... but wholly unsurprising.

Same - no truck image for me. I guess we all know that quincunx is a big truck enthusiast now though! 

It did look pretty boss. Definitely big enough to carry around a fragile male ego.
I get GMC and Buick ads in the middle.