Strongtowns.org Antifragile series

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Pointedstick
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Re: Strongtowns.org Antifragile series

Post by Pointedstick » Mon Aug 01, 2016 8:53 pm

Yep, I've got Granola Shotgun on my morning reading list already! Great stuff. The regulatory problems will probably never go away, sadly. They're created, expanded, and maintained by an infrastructure of people united by the psychological traits of fearing chaos and wanting to ward it off with rules and bureaucracy (or in their vocabulary, "order").
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Re: Strongtowns.org Antifragile series

Post by Maddy » Wed Aug 03, 2016 7:34 am

At the risk of being politically incorrect (again), it seems pretty obvious to me that the appearance and liveability of a neighborhood has everything to do with who lives there. Seems to me we'd cut through a lot of crap if we could just accept the fact that large portions of the human race will, despite every intervention, continue to function at a level just one step above protozoan. I dare you to do that study.
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Re: Strongtowns.org Antifragile series

Post by Mountaineer » Wed Aug 03, 2016 8:10 am

Maddy wrote:At the risk of being politically incorrect (again), it seems pretty obvious to me that the appearance and liveability of a neighborhood has everything to do with who lives there. Seems to me we'd cut through a lot of crap if we could just accept the fact that large portions of the human race will, despite every intervention, continue to function at a level just one step above protozoan. I dare you to do that study.
Agreed. You are what you eat, on many levels, literally and metaphorically. ;)

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Re: Strongtowns.org Antifragile series

Post by Kriegsspiel » Tue Aug 23, 2016 8:48 pm

Pointedstick wrote:Yep, I've got Granola Shotgun on my morning reading list already! Great stuff.
What other housing/CNU/urbanism/demographics/geography do you have in your feed?
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Re: Strongtowns.org Antifragile series

Post by Pointedstick » Wed Aug 24, 2016 8:20 am

Kriegsspiel wrote:
Pointedstick wrote:Yep, I've got Granola Shotgun on my morning reading list already! Great stuff.
What other housing/CNU/urbanism/demographics/geography do you have in your feed?
Just Granola Shotgun, StrongTowns, and http://www.newworldeconomics.com.
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Re: Strongtowns.org Antifragile series

Post by MachineGhost » Wed Aug 24, 2016 4:44 pm

Pointedstick wrote:Just Granola Shotgun, StrongTowns, and http://www.newworldeconomics.com.
What is the URL for the RSS feed for StrongTowns?
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Re: Strongtowns.org Antifragile series

Post by Kriegsspiel » Wed Aug 24, 2016 5:34 pm

I just copied the main URL into feedly and it finds the feed for me.
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Re: Strongtowns.org Antifragile series

Post by MachineGhost » Wed Aug 24, 2016 6:18 pm

Kriegsspiel wrote:I just copied the main URL into feedly and it finds the feed for me.
Well what is it then? The RSS validator I used couldn't find one.
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Re: Strongtowns.org Antifragile series

Post by MediumTex » Wed Aug 24, 2016 6:34 pm

I doubt if anyone cares, but this is the street I grew up on and that is the elementary school I went to at the end of the street in the distance.

Driveway in the foreground on the right led to my crib.

Image

Working class west Texas neighborhood near an Air Force base. I didn't know anything about architecture back then, but it was alright. What I did notice back then was cars, and every teenager in the neighborhood seemed to have a GTO, Camaro, or El Camino. The sound of the exhaust systems and classic rock coming from the windows has always stayed with me. Knowing what I know today, living there would be very difficult, but in my state of innocence as a kid it was awesome other than a serious problem with bicycle theft.

That's a mesquite tree on the right with all of the curved branches. We hated mesquite trees because they had thorns that would kill a soccer ball in the blink of an eye. I believe that the native Americans word for the mesquite tree was something like "devil tree" because it was impossible to make arrows from the curved branches. Mesquite trees are like a tree shaped cactus. They can survive on little water and the thorns will make you think twice about messing with them. We had one in our yard and I hated it. Like so many ugly things in the world, however, those trees are survivors, and thus it's hard not to respect them.
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Re: Strongtowns.org Antifragile series

Post by Xan » Wed Aug 24, 2016 8:44 pm

MachineGhost wrote:
Kriegsspiel wrote:I just copied the main URL into feedly and it finds the feed for me.
Well what is it then? The RSS validator I used couldn't find one.
http://www.strongtowns.org/journal?format=RSS
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Re: Strongtowns.org Antifragile series

Post by Pointedstick » Fri Oct 07, 2016 3:16 pm

Lest anyone think I'm losing my contrarian edge, here's a post about how you can get rich with suburbia! ;D

http://hommelscitadel.com/and-now-for-s ... er-country
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Re: Strongtowns.org Antifragile series

Post by MachineGhost » Fri Oct 07, 2016 3:49 pm

It’s all too clear why parents will spend their last dollar (and their last borrowed dollar) on their kids’ education: In a society with dramatic income inequality and dramatic educational inequality, the cost of missing out on the best society has to offer (or, really, at the individual scale, the best any person can afford) is unfathomable. So parents spend at the brink of what they can afford. By contrast, non-parents are far more likely to actually build up savings. (In cases where parents do manage to find affordable housing in a district with good-quality schools, it can make all the difference.)
True, dat!

But investing in your kids as your retirement plan doesn't explain two things... 1) why do people continue to live in uber expensive coastal cities with utterly shitty schools; and 2) why does increased building density raise prices separate from better schools? Economies of scale are supposed to lower costs, not increase them.

When you combine these together, it's truly a head scratcher (for me).

Incidentally, as I've been looking at real estate investment possibilities, Ohio in the Rust Belt seems to be one of the best places for low-cost housing (specifically Columbus). Houses can cost $20K-$50K there. No joke. Now, maybe they're in a lower income, majority black area, but the point is prices like that are possible without being in the rural boonies miles from nowhere.
"All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called 'Facts'. They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain." -- Thomas Hobbes

Disclaimer: I am not a broker, dealer, investment advisor, physician, theologian or prophet.  I should not be considered as legally permitted to render such advice!
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Re: Strongtowns.org Antifragile series

Post by Pointedstick » Fri Oct 07, 2016 4:40 pm

MachineGhost wrote:But investing in your kids as your retirement plan doesn't explain two things... 1) why do people continue to live in uber expensive coastal cities with utterly shitty schools;
That's where the great jobs are. It's the lure of a high six-figure income.

MachineGhost wrote:2) why does increased building density raise prices separate from better schools? Economies of scale are supposed to lower costs, not increase them.
Because we mostly do density wrong in America, so most of the neighborhoods in these dense areas are blighted nightmares, with a few oases of European-style awesomeness (e.g. NYC's West Village), and everyone bids up the price of living there.

Most of the coastal cities are actually terrible places to live. It's just a few districts or neighborhoods that are nice. Good places to work or play, but lousy to actually live there.

MachineGhost wrote:Incidentally, as I've been looking at real estate investment possibilities, Ohio in the Rust Belt seems to be one of the best places for low-cost housing (specifically Columbus). Houses can cost $20K-$50K there. No joke. Now, maybe they're in a lower income, majority black area, but the point is prices like that are possible without being in the rural boonies miles from nowhere.
That's why. White people don't want to live or own property near black people. Could be a major overlooked opportunity if you believe that the residents are perfectly normal and avoided for irrational reasons like white racism.
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Re: Strongtowns.org Antifragile series

Post by Kriegsspiel » Sun Oct 09, 2016 11:38 am

That's not really like Columbus; it has a pretty diversified economy. If you're looking in the SE, I'd say refocus though. North Linden is an area I'm looking at.

If you really do want to buy a property in the SE, the city of Columbus sells abandoned properties for a few thousand dollars.
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Re: Strongtowns.org Antifragile series

Post by dualstow » Sat Sep 07, 2019 5:53 am

Looks like Strong Towns has a book coming out.
ISBN-13:

Code: Select all

978-1119564812
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Re: Strongtowns.org Antifragile series

Post by I Shrugged » Sat Sep 07, 2019 9:01 pm

Btw, PS’s bad Chicago photo was a back alley, not a street.
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Re: Strongtowns.org Antifragile series

Post by Kriegsspiel » Sat Sep 07, 2019 9:08 pm

I think he was dropping random googlestreeturchins, so that isn't surprising.
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