j2parman.bsky.social
Writer-editor based in Berkeley
198 posts
71 followers
32 following
Regular Contributor
Active Commenter
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"Call me Elon."
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Wow!
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"Krasnov," it's alleged.
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At least he looks the part of a Nazi buffoon.
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Was just working out the odds of it slamming into Mar-a-Lago. My calculations include karmic spin.
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I agree. They blew a billion bucks for no result, and now they're back? Let's see some opposition, and then we'll talk.
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Agree. Two really different contexts. Politically, also.
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Doesn't answer the question, but sheds some light.
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I'm not quarreling with you, but rather suggesting that in the current lull, there's an opportunity to look at what the legislation gave us and tune it accordingly to get better results. To me, the results are mixed. Berkeley illustrates this and if you extrapolate from them, real harm will be done.
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If multifamily appears here with these attributes, I'm quite sure that hostility to densifying will diminish. The reactions now are too a lack of context and the propensity to build out the envelope that the current legislation allows. This could easily be rethought without derailing production.
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When you look at European and some local nonprofit examples - David Baker Architects has designed several - you see how they've engaged residents or the nearby community and built in shared settings that support families with kids. This is what's missing, although it appears that NBB will have some.
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I wrote about this recently. I don’t think my neighborhood is unique, btw, but it has attributes worth preserving and emulating in new development.
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johnjparman.medium.com/on-our-organ...
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The bond threshold failed because voters don’t trust cities unless the money is earmarked. Family housing isn’t more affordable. It’s still in short supply because developers aren’t interested in it. Students get all the attention. That’s lowered rents selectively, I agree.
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The boxes are a packaged product that contributes little to the street; older neighborhoods have variation and allow individual expression. It can be otherwise with multiunit, but it rarely is here. Just bland, outsized sameness.
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Remember that the assumption - from SPUR and others - was that goosing market-rate housing would produce broader affordability. I don’t see that borne out by what’s happened since.
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And where are those subsidies?
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Also, look around. Units, yes; urbanity? Not so much.
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True, but the bulk of it has been market-rate and limited to certain parts of the market. Wider affordability hasn’t happened and no real dent’s been made in the shortages of BMR.
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Wiener is a neoliberal posing as a progressive. The legislation that followed bears this out - a developer's wet dream, but unfortunately they only dream about undifferentiated boxes.
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Just no coins.
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Thank you for this masterful summation.
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Only one rating matters.
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My daughter told me that all his books are essentially the same. I've only read "Damien." I started "The Glass Bead Game," but I didn't finish it.
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In every generation, there are those who care about the next, while there are others who care only about themselves. The latter are often caught up in a kind of tribal narcissism, every bit as destructive as the other kind, possibly more so.
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We're still here, along with many others.
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I bought a $16 Casio watch to travel and now it’s the only watch I wear.
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The DNC has long sucked at effective communications. The RNC has had the edge since the 2014 midterms.
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Surprised Trump didn't claim to be providing jobs in Gaza for Palestinian waiters (bussed in from Egypt, of course).