cmballer

Notes from Monday's commission meeting, which you can watch here: https://www.bhamgov.org/online_services/watch.php: * The vote was 5-2 in favor of going forward with the development agreement. The commission was assured it was "non-binding." …

We hear that City Manager Joe Valentine, fearful that a bond issue will not pass muster with voters, is kicking around the idea of funding a new N. Old Woodward parking structure without running it past voters. What do you think about that?  If …

You may have seen signs popping up around town inviting Birmingham residents to participate in the master planning process coming up in May. The May dates on the signs are very important indeed. But what the signs don't say is that the planning …

Cake.co is a new forum, and a new kind of forum, and so I have the luxury of being able to communicate with its founder, Chris MacAskill. He wrote to me the other day the following, which has been edited slightly by me, because our conversation …

A dance mom is a mother of a dance student. As in https://www.babble.com/parenting/4-reasons-i-kind-of-suck-as-a-dance-mom/

What do you think of this? In the development agreement that was the subject of Monday's workshop is this sentence, referring to the bond issue: "Developer will pay to the City the sum of up to Twenty Thousand and 00/100 ($20,000.00) Dollars in …

It is really a shame, and quite puzzling, that the public has almost systematically been excluded from the process of planning for this parcel. This despite the fact that the public will ultimately have its say when it votes on a bond issue (or …

I attended the commission workshop last night on the development agreement for N. Bates. As a student of urban design, I continue to be amazed at the lackadaisical attitude toward the overall program for the site. City Manager Joe Valentine …

Hello.... Hello... Anybody out there fit into the category of dance mom (or dad)?

Hey, Bert. The 2016 Plan sketched out, very roughly and in 1996, the idea that is being proposed today. I seriously doubt that in 2019 Andres Duany would suggest that his thumbnail sketch was done in stone, or that it should be done to achieve an …

Responding to the original post, the fly on the wall would be looking at something vaguely reminiscent of the daily Page One meetings I attended at the Detroit Free Press in the 1980s. They were not unlike similar meetings at similar newspapers …

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/opinion/end-of-cars-uber-lyft.html Many questions about future parking demand. Maybe a few answers here?

You might be interested in looking at a couple of websites, Chris. Congress for the New Urbanism has a ton. And the DPZ website is interesting because DPZ handled our master planning process in 2016, and has been engaged to help us update the plan …

I suspect it will be a while before a reasonable number of people join this conversation, so in the meantime, it makes sense to provide some background. First, thanks go out to Chris MacAskill, co-founder of Cake and founder of one of my favorite …

Welcome to Cake, and a conversation about urban planning in Birmingham, Mich. I hope to engage both those directly involved in Birmingham's evolution — residents, visitors, officials, planners — as well as the wider community of those interested in …

Cake sure looks delicious. The first bite was good, but I really want to know what it is made of before I serve it to family and friends. Unfortunately, the recipe is nowhere to be found. I stumbled over the difference between a "conversation" and …