Coby

Working on creating better, more beautiful places to live in. Developer, Writer, Urbanist, Professor, Optimist. Check out my writing below!

[Coby @Cobylefko]

It's a hopeful work about our ability to create places today that are as good as have ever existed. Our best days are not behind us. All it takes is a little bit of Optimism to get started!

Check out the link on Amazon below!!

https://t.co/janlM4lIBC

[Coby @Cobylefko]

San Francisco already has so many wonderful skinny residential highrises.

Building more of them would simply be returning to a point in history where the city believed it should open its arms to all, not an arbitrary time where history was deemed to have stopped. Build more!

[Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @Noahpinion]

SOON

[Coby @Cobylefko]

@aaron_lubeck Put in a protected bike lane and then let's copy and paste around the world!

[Coby @Cobylefko]

As it begins to get hotter out, more cities should think about building like this.

Emparrados, or vine arbours, clean up the air, cool down streets, and make them more beautiful!

[Coby @Cobylefko]

There's a good piece on the canopies of Jerez de la Frontera from the Guardian, below!
https://t.co/6hLH9ugHRX

[Coby @Cobylefko]

What?!

[Yahoo Sports @YahooSports]

Air Corgi makes predictions for the Spurs-Thunder Western Conference Finals showdown 🍿

[Coby @Cobylefko]

Politicians must have loyalty to the public. They must be dead-set on improving outcomes for the vast majority of people, not protecting the interests of a politically connected few, who care more of extraction than public benefit.

Unsure why this has proven controversial!

[Coby @Cobylefko]

Unions should be paid in proportion to the quality of the services they provide, not what their most aggressive negotiators can extract from political pressure.

If test scores go up, headways go down, construction gets more efficient, let's pay more!

https://t.co/ABbA4PAzAc

[Coby @Cobylefko]

But due to sleights of hand played by unions, and a lack of understanding of what they do, this is very difficult.

"You don't want to pay teachers more?"
"You want kids to suffer?"

How does one fight against this? Well, unions don't pay teachers more, and kids perform worse!

[Coby @Cobylefko]

@maxdubler In the medieval core it's a lot closer than I think you'd expect (far higher lot coverage, less area dedicated to roads, open space, etc), but yes, you're totally right!

In the piece I wrote as a part of this I contrasted it to 7-story mansion blocks, which can be denser!

[Coby @Cobylefko]

It's pretty frustrating that building beautiful cities is very easy and cheap, yet so many places spend billions of dollars discovering new ways to repel people.

A gray day in Haarlem is far more pleasing than a sunny one in Nine Elms (London), and is a fraction of the cost

[Coby @Cobylefko]

@peakay81 Huh? It's more expensive to build a two story building than a 30 story tower? This will come as a great surprise to all developers and contractors worldwide who intimately know the variance in cost differences

[Coby @Cobylefko]

@BrapJb @Danopolitan Very right on the streetfront. As for the density, I'm fine with towers next to the station, but we can achieve tremendous density with mansion blocks - we should plan for them!

[Coby @Cobylefko]

https://t.co/B6SURQ5jcg

[Coby @Cobylefko]

If you're looking for solutions to how we can build better mega-projects, I have a few below!

[Coby @Cobylefko]

It's pretty frustrating that building beautiful cities is very easy and cheap, yet so many places spend billions of dollars discovering new ways to repel people.

A gray day in Haarlem is far more pleasing than a sunny one in Nine Elms (London), and is a fraction of the cost

[Coby @Cobylefko]

@Danopolitan Yes, probably easier in fact, and definitely significantly cheaper

[Coby @Cobylefko]

@YIMBYLAND Except it's not YIMBY, it's totally conditional. When there's an embrace on market rate, then maybe!

[Coby @Cobylefko]

@LaurenceBSiegel Møllestien in Aarhus!

[Coby @Cobylefko]

@MadNorskie It's fabulously beautiful! Dutch cities are magnificent

[Coby @Cobylefko]

@tenrius Of course. The point is contemporary development is so often poor at the mega-project scale, and that we'd be better reverting back to traditional development patterns