friend of the built environment

Oh, if you haven’t noticed, I’ve gone missing. The last couple weeks of work were super-suck what with training my replacement and, you know, leaving and all. I’m unemployed and homeless for the next couple weeks whilst I traipse across North America by bus and train. This means I’ll either be really prolific or totally [...]

By Jeff Fox:
Why did I need to buy a 3G version (which I don’t have yet coz it’s not in stock til next month)? Because the stupid neighbor stopped letting me steal their wifi! Etc etc, whine moan, I’m a consumer and thus must be coddled and loved because without me Chinese slave labourers might [...]

Like I can talk now, being all jobless and all, but this graph from Calculated Risk reminds me that one reason the late 90s were such a prosperous and wealthy era had much to do with the fact that so many people were working. It was the highest proportion of the population in history.
From a [...]

A couple thoughts on a Monday when I will not be going to work…
A lot of leftist nail-biting has been done in response to the generally right-wing accusation that the Obama administration and its Democrat Congress have achieved very little due to the health care war. Sublime Oblivion contradicts this with an interesting summary of [...]

Launching into the great flatlands of America on a Greyhound bus, I reflect on my few short days in Denver.
From an urbanist perspective, I’m pretty impressed with Denver. A community this geographically isolated needs to have a sound built environment because it’s tough for people to go anywhere else without a large time and energy [...]

I inherited a bad habit from my parents, in that I view all observations of the world through the lens of my own experience (which everyone does) but then extrapolate that everyone should understand my experience and gear their actions to that experience.
For example: my vitriol against sunny economists like Richard Florida and Jim Russell [...]

Missed Ya.

It’s been an awesome trip the past two weeks. As I pretty much anticipated, I’ve been pretty MIA here, but actually rather active there thanks to my nifty new cheapo cam.
Some things I’ve come to understand more clearly in the two week break from normal life:

I will not miss California.
I do enjoy urban exploration.
I love [...]

Pedestrians of the world unite!
…I’ve got road rage issues with cars and bikes. While the former pretend they can’t see pedestrians, especially when making a left-hand turn on a green light, those of us trying to negotiate an intersection – or a sidewalk – are apparently completely invisible to the latter. We take our life [...]

Sister Betty recently opined that it was a sad state of our society that when he loaned his phone to a kid on the street who asked if he could make a quick call, a complete stranger came up to him to scold him about how he should not loan his phone to anyone, implying [...]

This new bus route in Pittsburgh has to be one of the coolest ever: It goes from 40th and Butler in Lawrenceville, through the heart of Bloomfield, past the Market District Giant Eagle, the mass housing sector of Shadyside and onto Forbes and Murray in Squirrel Hill. Then down to Homestead and the massive Waterfront [...]

My train today took me to Union Station for a 5-hour layover. It was easy to stay occupied.
Now imagine an airport, that they put inside the Taj Mahal, and then attached the world’s largest mall to it, and took away all the security theatre. Yeah, like that.

This is the best explanation I’ve seen as to the immorality of negotiating away (or just canceling under BK law) the pensions workers assumed they were being paid when they did work in the past.
Was USAir canceling the retirement system for thousands of employees a crime in natural law? Yes, I think so. They bargained [...]

I had a few people enquire about my road trip, which I admit I posted relatively little about here. That’s coz most of my “trip journal” was in the form of pictures I put up on Flickr. No plans for a wordy triplogue here, but feel free to visit there.

I found myself starting to fall for it over the past couple weeks, as the combined effects of unemployment and my new daily exposure to television took hold. But I had to talk myself down: it’s OK, you’re not buying it.
Investing in modern developed economies typifies irrational exuberance in every way, in every instance.
Rational economic [...]

As a follow-up to my previous entry, I had a reader ask how my views on investing would apply to those who enjoy investing as an activity in and of itself.
If you are looking at the game as entertainment value, then that’s different. I can identify with the Gordon Gekko-type who finds pleasure in playing [...]

Interesting discussion has been going on over at NullSpace. The debate is essentially between those who want transit that discourages auto use whilst at the same time maximizing social integration of those with the least amount of transit choice, and those who want transit that maximizes middle-class and wealthy motorist use and provides a civic [...]