Oh how I wish the city will plow some of that $60 million into the library being built there next to Green.

This is a really bad spot for a library - transit access will be very poor. And the primary issue with these new developments should be forcing parking design that can be converted later into other uses - it's going to be hard to sell less parking, especially with car-loving Laura Morrison joining the council to do the dirty deeds of car-loving Jeff Jack and the rest of the car-loving ANC, but at least we can attempt to make sure it can be repurposed later in saner times.

quality public transit downtown? hahahahahaha

Ha, the people that just paid a couple hundred thousand to live in the 360, with a view that will be ruined within a couple years.

shucks.

Grape Ape, too bad we just elected Laura Morrison. Against all density, anywhere, at all times. Just got the city council to pass additional duplex rules which make it even harder to build or maintain 2-dwelling-unit properties in the center city.

Like with the .4 FAR (killing garage apartments and duplexes), the Planning Commission recommended differently, but the City Council is scared to death of Jeff Jack's reactionaries. Those of you who didn't drag yourself out to vote for Galindo better understand what you just bought us - a lot MORE of this kind of crap.

Ducknutz, if you want to live in a city where people don't live downtown, Detroit is a great option. Plus, they love the automobile up there!

tim you said that very well, it always seems the people first to mainly criticize the public transportation because they have either never been on it/ or maybe once.

sometimes yes you have to wake up early to catch that early bus that does not get behind the slowest moving cars in the world... but the alternative is sleep! sleep is lame.

the public library is going through a lot of road and accessibility studies... trust that people will be able to access it in the future...

sorry but i might get on a list somewhere; but i am thankful gas prices are raising; go gas prices, GO!

but she is against density, in general. she will change her tone (i hope)

these gas prices are going to make everyone a believer in city cores///

crosses fingers.

I don't know where you got the idea that Mike wants to "cede any and all controls on development to the market -- and blindly hope it is done in a positive manner", but I'm 99.99999% positive you are absolutely wrong.

From reading everything Mike has written over the past couple of years on here and sometimes looking at his blog (when he links to it), he doesn't seem to think the market will do the "right thing". He's more than welcome to correct me, but I always gathered he wanted the government to encourage smart and responsible dense growth instead of just hoping people would start choosing density over sprawl.

You can have your beef with Mike all you want, but your petty personal tangents without any substance on the growth issue (other than to incorrectly state "facts") doesn't convince me you're an authority on the issue(s).

Thanks, cram, but it's a bit less interventionist than that. The current state of affairs is that the government forces you to develop low-density sprawl almost everywhere, even if you want to build something dense and walkable. So it's not that I want to let the market do whatever it wants (I do hate suburban sprawl); and it's not that I want to mandate density; but that I want to stop mandating so much low-density crap in the firm belief that we'll get a lot less sprawl that way than futilely trying to fight the state on developing the exurbs.

Does the market want to give us more density? Yup. What happens as soon as we lift the artifically low zoning caps in places like West Campus? Cranes pop out of nowhere. Can we harness the market to give us some other things we want? Double yup. Make some height an entitlement, and make some additional height contingent on public amenities like Great Streets and street-level retail. Works like a friggin' charm, especially compared to saying "no" to everything.

Morrison's making that "no" even worse - the McMansion ordinance (task force she led) changes to duplexes, explored quite aptly here by Austin Contrarian, will close pretty much the last door for secondary dwelling units in the center-city - those are the most affordable living units we've got (more affordable even than multi-family). Given that she and her cronies have opposed all multi-family density everywhere _too_, slickshu is just blowing out their ass.

fair enough. i think i knew all the above in terms of your views (because i just slapped my head and said 'duh').

No, Slickshu, that's a load of crap. You can measure Morrison's general words by the specific fact that she's opposed every density project under the sun except a few cases where the people who wrote the OWANA plan tied her hands.

You can measure my general words by the specific fact that I've told you exactly what I want to do in a way that specifically contradicted your claim - just a couple of comments upstream from here. Allowing additional height in return for public amenities is most definitely not covered by "cede any and all controls[...]and blindly hope".

You're a lying sack of crap cowering behind anonymity. About what I expect from Jeff Jack or one of his minions at BATPAC/ANC.

To the same extent that "car-loving" Morrison is "against all density, anywhere, at all times", Dahmus wants to "cede any and all controls on development to the market -- and blindly hope it is done in a positive manner."

So you're saying that if part A is complete fabricated bullshit (ie, what Mike said) than part B (ie, what you said) is also complete fabricated bullshit?

That's a pretty strong compelling argument for listening to you: "I can prove his words are full of shit because I also can state random crap!"

You're going to make peoples' brains explode with that kind of truthiness.

Supply & Demand affects the price of gas. Americans are used to (and love) driving their cars. Driving cars will never fall out of fashion. The market is sensitive to that. So whether through domestic production, reduced usage, conservation or a complete switch to a new source of energy to fuel electrical plants, it will become affordable again to own and use a car, thereby causing a new flight from the condo ghettos of the city. This is all cyclical. The return of electric concept cars (and other fancy new cars that use less gas) is proof that the market is quickly rising to meet this demand.

I hate to burst the bubbles of the New Urban Density folks, but the gas crisis will not last that long before the market provides an innovative way for people to enjoy their cars, commute to work, and enjoy nice large houses in the suburbs again.

Did anybody catch what Slickshu proposed as a growth-management policy? I must have missed it.

"Using your words, how do you jibe "except a few cases" with "anywhere, at all times"?"

The main point she made during the campaign to attempt to rebut the "you always oppose density" argument was that she remained silent about a few projects around OWANA.

She remained silent because the people who wrote that neighborhood plan made it impossible for her to have even a snowball's chance in hell at winning if she opposed projects along certain corridors - and she's a bit smarter than the average person in BATPAC, so she kept her mouth shut. The OWANA plan is a model for how it's supposed to be done - identifying places to put new density rather than just saying "NO" (Hyde Park) or saying "put it in another neighborhood" (CANPAC). City Council loved it. It's now city code.

She didn't support those projects; she just kept quiet.

Had we (yes, I worked on that plan, although not in zoning/FLUM) not tied her hands so well ahead of time, I have no doubt she would have opposed all those projects as well.

If you think she's not against density anywhere and everywhere, how can you possibly explain attempting to rally the ANC against the Spring condominiums despite the fact that they are downtown or her ridiculous ads about the Green redevelopment, also downtown? To say nothing of 7Rio; like all of the above strongly supported by people living and working in the area; but, of course, she'd be able to see it from her mansion, so it can't be allowed to be built.

ducknutz,

There is no easy market driven solution that will miraculously replace gasoline.

The market is hardly rising to meet demand.

Dodge's solution is what? To keep selling RAM pickups and to give you gasoline at $3/gallon for the next 3 years.

The next earliest American hybrid is due when? 2010, I believe.

Honda cut its production of two of its hybrids already and is attempting to retool for a new one.

Additionally, just like we are approaching and/or have passed peak oil, the same goes for natural gas production in the coming years. Guess what powers most of our new power plants? Remember those rolling blackouts in Texas and California? And when the antiquated power grid went down in the entire northeast and upper midwest? What is going to happen when you try to plug your mythical electric car into the wall? The infrastructure and planning isn't there for this change because people like you (and most of Washington DC, to be fair) think the market will just solve the problem.

And before you suggest corn and soy based ethanol: It isn't scalable if you (and most of the world) want to continue to eat. Tack on top of that the falling water table levels and we have a recipe for disaster.

This isn't cyclical, it's the beginning of the end game for our society that is propped up on cheap oil supplies. I certainly hope there is a technology/energy solution that solves the problem, but in the interim society isn't prepared. There won't be a discontinuous leap from gasoline and wonder-energy-technology-X. There's going to be a period where we can't eat 49 cent tomatoes from Chile and have to pay $10+/gal for gas and probably not have exploding population growth (ie, it'll be hard for a family to feed 1 kid.. much less 4 or 5 that get hauled around in an SUV right now).

But sure, keep wishing upon a market forces star. We're also supposed to be going to Mars, remember?

ducknutz, you're engaged in a combination of wishful thinking and survivorship bias. There's no guarantee that just because our society survived the last N energy transitions that there's going to magically be another one that we make it through.

Economics can't trump thermodynamics.

Two words, natural gas.