George Bird Grinnell

Mountains are pretty cool. also housing policy

[George Bird Grinnell @keegsieb]

@EikePan @NordhagenSindre @BenjiNaesen Veistroffer could get some top 10s for sure

[Alicia, Courtyard Urbanist @UrbanCourtyard]

This is the closest commercial area to my childhood home in suburban West Michigan.

I grew up in a place of astonishing natural beauty, and I watched it get steadily paved over by development like this. Old apple orchards and woods were razed and replaced with subdivisions, arterial roads, parking lots, and commercial plazas. It was horrifying to experience as a child the slow conversion of a beautiful landscape into a landscape of asphalt and disposable retail boxes.

If Grand Rapids had been allowed to grow more like Copenhagen - with dense, walkable, family-friendly neighborhoods that worked for middle-class households - would the sprawl have been this bad?

If ordinary families had been able to live in beautiful urban neighborhoods with good homes, schools, shops, parks, would so much countryside have had to be consumed?

This is the cost of banning good urbanism with BROAD appeal (not just the residential towers). We destroy nature by making low-density sprawl the only politically acceptable form of family life.

[Mark R. Brown, AICP, CNU @Car_Free_USA]

Urbanism keeps the city in the city and the country in the country.

Sprawl plasters everything with auto-oriented garbage.

[ThienemanSZN🇺🇸 @ThienemanSZN]

COME BLUE THATS A STRIKE

[George Bird Grinnell @keegsieb]

@NairoInGreen I’m cooking

[clara the urbanist @SlopHq]

“speed cameras are a cash grab” the camera is stationary, clearly marked, and takes your money exclusively when you break a law you knew about. there is a 100% effective way to defund it and you are describing your refusal to use it as a principle

[Max Dubler 🏳️‍🌈 @maxdubler]

There are only 2 real positions on housing:

1. We should build enough homes for everyone who wants to live here.

2. We should only build new homes for people who really *deserve* to live here.

Position #2 comes in left and right variants; but the outcomes are largely the same.

[clara the urbanist @SlopHq]

an acre of solar panels makes something like 50 times the usable energy of an acre of corn grown for ethanol and doesn't exhale a shot glass of water into every cubic meter of air for the privilege. but only one of them has a senator from iowa

[George Bird Grinnell @keegsieb]

@NairoInGreen Ciclismo podcast coming soon??

[George Bird Grinnell @keegsieb]

@dieworkwear

[George Bird Grinnell @keegsieb]

@LittleMikeyMcD @steady_drumbeat @bubububow3 This is the type of analysis you get when you just accept the assumption that supply of housing won't change.

In that zero-sum framework, anything improving is a taking from the poor and underserved!

Existing in that zero-sum framework and relishing in its failures is crazy.

[clara the urbanist @SlopHq]

tokyo froze nobody’s rent and rents are flat because they build 100,000 units a year. nyc froze a million rents, built almost nothing, and the line for an apartment still runs out the door. one of these is a housing policy. one is a hostage negotiation

[Neoliberal Akiho ✨🇺🇳🇨🇦 @NeoliberalAkiho]

Leftists say “uhh housing shouldn’t be a commodity” like that magically frees it from the laws of economics.

[George Bird Grinnell @keegsieb]

@LittleMikeyMcD @steady_drumbeat @bubububow3 I bet it’s fun to ignore the fact that one of the fundamental pillars of the YIMBY movement is tearing down exclusionary and racist single-family zoning. Have you ever met a YIMVY? We will probably bring up The Color of Law within 5 minutes.

[Ta-Nehisi Quotes @steady_drumbeat]

If only Democrats would come up with an affirmative ambitious, nationwide counter-proposal which engages with their past failure to bring down housing costs. Leftists would probably love that.

[George Bird Grinnell @keegsieb]

@RichardHanania Has literally anyone in the abundance movement either not spoken up about the rent freeze or made their feelings on rent control very clearly known in the past few years? This is so disingenuous.

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

Good thread. Bottom line:

“In light of the tightening of the regulatory system in recent years and the subsequent deterioration in the financial condition of Stabilized housing, I believe Mayor Mamdani’s rent freeze is both irresponsible and an abuse of the system. It will accelerate the deterioration in the financial and maintenance condition of older rent regulated housing.”

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

There are some center-to-right wing accounts I follow that are more offended by the possibility that some public health sources are over-estimating the death count from Musk carelessly destroying US global health programs than by the core fact that Musk really did carelessly destroy US global health (and bragged about it relentlessly) in a way that clearly killed people.

These people know who they are, and they're wrong.

[George Bird Grinnell @keegsieb]

Love my boy Kuss but Narvaez is legit top 5 puncheur in the world and can ride on the flat. Heart says Kuss, head says Narvaez

[Anthony Walsh | Roadman Podcast @Roadman_Podcast]

Head to head, choose one

Sepp Kuss or Navaraz?

[Everything Price Sufferer (but especially eggs) @agraybee]

Non-voters have been studied to death and they come in two varieties: people whose politics are bizarre (e.g. single-issue fireworks legalization voters) and people who simply cannot grasp that politicians control the government.