Wandering around Worldchanging (highly recommended blog on the ideas and technologies that are changing the world for the better, like Wired but more idealistic), I noticed that one of my favorite authors, Bruce Sterling, is blogging. I love the internet. Bruce points out an interesting new acquisition for Google. They're purchasing the company that makes SketchUp, a Computer Aided Design program. This means that Google Earth will soon have 3-D models of things located on it, accessible to anyone. How? Who's making the models? Benevolent magic elves. Think of it, a CAD/GIS convergence that's simple to use and freely available on the web! Revelation! I can't imagine the cool toys that this will produce. Goodbye, gray blocks. If this were around when I was doing the Transportation Matrix for Cville Tomorrow, oh man it would have been cool.

I'm listening to Dr. James Yates speaking on WNRN’s Sunday Morning Wake-Up Call about Guilt and Shame. Yeah, he's my dad. I'm proud. Check it out. Podcasting courtesy of the masterful Sean Tubbs at the Charlottesville Podcasting Network.

Just read a disturbing post in Wired about a clever state of California innovation that streamlined paying state taxes, to the delight of taxpayers. Apparently, the industry based around repairing government tax inefficiency felt threatened, and leaned on their Republican allies in the state legislature. All of a sudden, tax efficiency "violates the proper role of government."
This is another great argument for public funding of candidates. It doesn't make any sense to force candidates to raise money from special interests, and not pay those interests back with favorable legislation. "Oh, I'll take your bribe, but don't expect to get anything back for it." That sort of attitude doesn't win the big bucks.
My hope is that within the next ten years, we'll have public funding for candidates in Charlottesville, and public funding at the state level within thirty. I'm hoping for the national level in fifty. If things go well for me, maybe I'll live to see a time when government corruption is the exception, rather than the rule.

Surfing the net, I found this research paper from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. The piece focuses on whose taxes would go up or down under a split-rate tax system. The study looks at three Virginia communities: Roanoke City, Highfield County and Chesterfield County. One interesting finding was the benefits to homeowners: "In all three localities, the move to an equal-yield split-rate tax would reduce the residential share of the real property tax while increasing the business tax share." Not surprisingly, they found a significant tax increase on vacant land. In Roanoke (where Census data was available), they found that, within residential areas, lower-income residents tended to benefit more than higher-income residents.
While I appreciate the value of getting this information across, I am concerned that people will view split-rate tax as creating winners and losers. Fundamentally, I don't believe government should do that. I feel it to be an arbitrary violation of personal liberty. This is actually a major reason why I am so interested in split-rate taxation. Efficiency wins and inefficiency loses. Kind of like how the free market is supposed to work, because that's exactly what split-rate taxation does: create a healthier, more efficient market.
But efficiency isn't really going deep enough because, much as I like it, it doesn't really do that much for me. I love beauty, nature, romance, health, and children. And that's where split-rate taxes make the difference that I care about: making beautiful cities profitable, making it easy to get outside and relax, making exercise part of everyday life, helping us make more connections with each other, and helping us give a better world to our children.
What I mean is that, rather than going after one policy or another to solve all of our problems, we should be asking ourselves "How can our city be beautiful, healthy, vibrant?" And go from there.

To: info@rivanna.org

Hi, I've been researching the pros and cons of water fluoridation on the internet. There's some sobering stuff out there. The best estimate I could find for what we spend is about $20,000 a year. Do you have a more accurate figure? Maybe we could drop the fluoridation program and spend the money on upgrading the composting shed? A win-win!

Thanks,
Lyle Solla-Yates
Woolen Mills

Today at 1:30, a coalition of local environmental groups officially presented a united eco-action plan "Environmental Imperatives for the Commonwealth of Virginia" to Mayor David Brown and Councilor Kendra Hamilton of Charlottesville and Chairman Dennis Rooker and Supervisor Sally Thomas of Albemarle County. The three-page document outlines environmental priorities for action at the state level.
The imperatives include a Biodiversity Action Plan, stricter guidelines for logging, air quality monitoring throughout the state, reducing per capita power use by 50%, better growth control tools, improved funding for car alternatives, and prohibiting the energy industry from making Political Action Committee campaign contributions.
Seventeen groups participated in creating the document:
Sierra Club, People's Alliance for Clean Energy, Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice, Alternatives to Paving, Virginia Forest Watch, Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, Advocates for a Sustainable Albemarle Population, Citizens for Albemarle, Energy Justice Network, Coal River Mountain Watch, Public Citizen, Wildlaw, Voices for Animals, American Lung Association, Southern Energy Network, Nature Conservancy, and the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.
Some of these seem like a long shot. Like the PAC business. But the air quality monitoring seems reasonable enough as does better growth control tools, such as sufficient infrastructure legislation.

One of my clients, Advocates for a Sustainable Albemarle Population, is looking for a new Executive Director. I definitely recommend the position to anyone interested in sustainability and growth in the Charlottesville region. And you get the extra special privelege of being my boss.

Merry Christmas, Charlottesville.

I've been researching the Global Business Network and Scenario Planning. The idea here is to chart out possible future scenarios for the item of interest, in my case Charlottesville. You look at a do-nothing scenario, realistic scenarios if each faction gets its way, and hopefully some scenarios where multiple or even all factions get their way. Something that's bothered me with Charlottesville is that we have no real vision, no great plan for the future that we all understand and believe in. Even among the elites who follow these issues closely. The County has attempted this with the Neighborhood Model, with mixed success, but the Neighborhood Model is really just a jumble of useful tactics. It isn't really a scenario/dream/vision. I see nothing comparable on Charlottesville's end. Folks like Maurice Cox and ACCT support the Streetcar, folks like Mitch van Yahres and Bern Ewert support the Ruckersville Parkway, folks like David Slutzky support Bus Rapid Transit, and folks like Meredith Richards support the Virginia Railway Express. I happen to support land value taxation. Whoopee, these are all tactics. They're meaningless without a greater framework to rest upon. I'd like to see all of the interested groups in Charlottesville get together and chart out some possible scenarios for the region. I'd like to see a pro-development backlash scenario like what we saw in Loudoun, I'd like to see a Smart Growth scenario, I'd like to see a No-Growth scenario, and I'd like to see all the scenarios we aren't even talking and thinking about, like some sort of small farmer agrarian scenario like what Al Weed and Dave Matthews seem to be leaning towards, or a William McDonough-style Eco-Effective scenario, or a Peak Oil scenario, or a positive libertarian vision that doesn't trample our countryside, like what I suspect is in Neil Williamson's head. I'd like to see some real analysis done to see how all these scenarios pan out, who wins, what works, and I'd like for the region to go through the process to find a plan where we all win, and make it happen. I think there is a broad understanding of how special this region is, and what a crucial turning point we are at. We're drowning in good ideas, but without a scenario to throw around, a framework to fit them in, they have no substance, and we'll keep marching along the path of least resistance.

This is the first short story I wrote. It was inspired by Ray Kurzweil's Age of Spiritual Machines.

Lost in Fog
Lyle Solla-Yates

I reclined on a bench in my favorite garden, lost in daffodils. A monarch butterfly flew out from them and fluttered in front of my face. I lay still, watching the butterfly. It landed on my nose and slowly flapped its wings. I crossed my eyes and watched it melt away to nothing.
A bed of marigolds wilted and flowed together, forming a patch of brown linoleum tiles in the mulched bed. Two cherry trees parted to reveal a dingy corridor. My father stepped out of the corridor into the garden.
“Tom, where are your glasses?”
“Oh, I forgot. They’re right here.” I pulled a fresh pair of brown-rimmed glasses out of my pocket and put them on.
Dad frowned. “Your glasses have black rims.”
“Right.” The rims turned black.
“You have to maintain your habits, Tom. Humans are creatures of habit.”
“Yeah, you’ve told me,” I answered quietly.
Dad squinted at me. “What happened to your face?”
“My pimples? I have to keep my pimples?”
“They’re part of who you are, Tom.”
I felt two pimples appear on my face: one on my lower lip and another on the side of my nose, where I could see it.
My dad nodded. “Better. Have you been doing your homework?”
I shook my head, exasperated. “I barely did my homework before, what’s the point?”
He sighed and looked at the endless fog outside the garden walls. “It’s important, Tom.” He walked to the edge of the garden and turned back to look at me. A dark hallway stretched out behind him. “We’re having dinner up top tonight.”
I grunted and dad walked away. The trees closed up behind him. A flute played somewhere.
Moaning a little, I sat up on the bench and took my father’s workbook out of some thick ferns. I brushed a ladybug off the cover and started reading.

DARPA Internal Report
Top Secret

The civilian applications of U Fog are limitless. Medicine, communications, entertainment would benefit from this technology. Manufacturing is the most severe design problem. While desirable for control, centralized production is not viable. Atom by atom construction of nanobots is too slow and too costly. Nanobots need to self-replicate to a defined limit…

DARPA Nanotech Division Progress Report
Top Secret

Building upon the recent developments regarding buckyballs and their applications in nanotechnology, our division has successfully developed several microscopic carbon-based robots. They are able to work in a coordinated manner and are responsive to remote commands. More research is needed to improve user interface and refine nanobot motor skills…

Something buzzed harshly in the giant dandelion patch, breaking my concentration. I put down the book and stood up. I walked to the patch and stuck my hand into the mass of soft white puffs and yellow flowers. I pulled out an old-fashioned metal alarm clock with a new digital display. It read seven o’clock, not that time matters much down here. I turned it off and tossed it back into the dandelions.
The sky darkened and warm tropical rain fell into the garden. I tilted my head up, enjoying the warmth. The rainfall intensified, until the garden was washed away and I was underwater. I swam up, frog style.
My dad sat at our old white antique dinner table on top of the fog. He gestured at the seat across from him. His mouth was full.
I waded to a pool ledge and pulled myself up easily. One of the nice things about this new situation is that I’m a lot stronger. I dried off and sat down. “What’s for dinner?”
“Your mom’s collards and black-eyed peas.” He smiled sadly.
I looked at my collards. “I wish she was with us.”
“I miss her too.” He looked at the horizon, totally gray and empty. The fog frothed hungrily.
I looked up at the stars. They were perfect. I could never get the stars to look that way below. The air was so strange, very light and clear. I sighed and looked back down at the eerie landscape. In the distance, I saw something jutting out of the fog.
I got excited. “Hey, what is that? Is that other people?”
He shook his head. “That’s what I brought you up to show you.” An oriental rug formed below the table and carried us forward. As we got closer, I could see that it was moving slowly. It looked like a giant black rectangle tilting away from us. We stopped moving a hundred yards away from it. I saw our shadows against it.
“Is that a solar power thing?” I stared at the monolith in awe. It was massive.
My dad nodded grimly. “The utility fog is showing some extremely intelligent behavior.”
We had a solemn moment in front of the monolith. I broke it. “How can the fog be intelligent? Isn’t it just a lot of tiny robots?”
He shook his head. “I guess you haven’t gotten that far in the book yet. It is a lot of tiny robots, but the robots are all connected together, like neurons in our brain. Also like neurons, they have the potential for quantum computing, which allows for nonlinear leaps of logic and creative thought. As for how it figured out how to build a solar power collector, I have a theory.”
“Okay, tell me.”
“Read a little further and I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
The sun fell below the horizon and the monolith sank back into the fog.

Nano Lab Hypothesis: Life Beyond our Bodies
Dr. Pete Johnson

In religion, life after death plays a key role in the belief system of a group. However, science has, for the most part, left this concept unexamined. What makes us human? Is it our bodies? Our brains? Our minds, which are not our brains but something beyond and more complex? Or is it our soul?
There have been some fascinating recent developments in destructive scanning. Destructive scanning is defined as an extremely high quality digital copy of a three-dimensional object that destroys the original in the process. This is opposed to, say an MRI scan, which does not destroy the original, but produces a much less sophisticated copy. Destructive scanning is accurate to the submolecular level now. I was involved in a recent and innovative use of this technology in IBM’s Brain Machine project, where we destructively scanned a cadaver in order to reverse engineer his brain. Apparently this will help to build a better computer.
The hypothesis of Nano Lab is that destructive scanning technology can be used to store a person’s data, hopefully that person’s essence, and then download that data into a more durable form, preserving that person’s consciousness. It sounds like ghastly science fiction, but many…

Nano Lab Progress Report
Dr. Pete Johnson

We attempted our first destructive scan and digital reconstitution this week using a cadaver and some “utility fog” on loan from the Defense Department. Although we didn’t get enough to replicate the whole body, what we could copy came out perfectly. An interesting feature of this “fog” which no doubt improves its performance, is the way that it stores data. It works rather like a hologram or the brain, with data distributed evenly and apparently randomly throughout. When this project was in its early stages, it was thought that we would be using some form of robot or even a database, but this “fog” appears to be much more suitable for organic data. Hopefully, we will be able to get more for the next experiment…

DARPA Internal Report
Top Secret

From a Defense standpoint, the key development in nanotechnology is exponential reproduction. The Warbot team has nearly finished a design for assassin nanobots that reproduce exponentially in the circulatory system, causing cardiac arrest. There is also theory work on Counter-Nanotech, since rumors of similar weapons being developed in Europe and China…

I started to get sleepy. Okay, bored; I haven’t been sleepy in a while. I put down the book and stretched, accidentally knocking over a potted ivy plant. I picked it up and put it back on a pedestal. Something was really bothering me, I couldn’t focus. I took off my glasses and cleaned them on my shirt. Unfortunately, that didn’t help. I remembered a trick I figured out the first day. It had really freaked my dad out and he asked me not to do it again. I really felt the urge to, though. I stretched, and I stretched more, and I exploded out in all directions.
I saw my dad working in his office, studying the Fog, still trying to figure out how to stop it. I felt the jagged ocean floor as the Fog dug into it, searching for nutrients. I scraped along great piles of metal and rock, the torn remains of great cities. And far, far north, I felt an irritation, something huge and strange. I went there, curious to see what it was.
It was round and smooth, urgently real, but totally bizarre. It was a gigantic glass sphere bobbing in the Fog. I put my hand against it, fascinated. It didn’t break apart, it was totally solid. I looked through the glass.
Inside there was a garden filled with tropical plants. Something moved, and I saw that it was a girl. She was watering the plants methodically, going from one to the next. She was about my age and very pretty. I tapped on the glass, but she couldn’t hear. I stayed outside the sphere for a while, letting the Fog swirl me around with it. After half an hour, another girl came into the garden and talked with my girl. I thought my heart would burst. Thought became reality and my chest exploded, throwing me away from the sphere.
When I got myself back together, the tropical garden was empty. I looked at other parts of the sphere, seeing people eat, talk, live their lives. They all looked like people from a movie. They were all white and good-looking, and they wore really nice name brand clothes. Watching them made me feel lonely and self-pitying. I left them and went back to my garden. The daffodils waved at me and a fly swooped around my head. I sat down on my bench and tried to think things through. I kept getting this image in my mind of me running towards the girl from the sphere, and we hug and we kiss, and she gets ripped apart in my arms by the nanobots. Like mom.
Before I could clear anything up for myself, my alarm went off. I angrily pulled it out of the giant dandelion patch and threw it against the brick walkway, breaking it apart. I sat down on the bench and looked at the smashed parts for a minute, then picked them back up and put them together. Seven o’clock, time for dinner.
“You’re a little late tonight, Tom.” My dad arched an eyebrow.
I shook my head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
He shrugged. “Okay, what do you want to talk about?”
“The solar thing, how did the Fog figure out how to make a solar thing?”
“I think it took the idea from our heads, or rather our data, which is spread evenly across the Earth now.”
“So it isn’t really intelligent, it just takes people’s ideas?”
“That’s pretty close. It’s actually extremely intelligent, but it lacks creativity. However, it can apply our creativity to its own problems.”
I remembered smashing the clock in my hand. I saw the scene where I hug the girl and she gets ripped apart again. I faded away from our conversation, moving quickly through the Fog and arriving back where the giant glass sphere was. It was held in a massive fleshy hand far above me. The Fog cleared away where I was standing, and I was too shocked to flow away with it. I stood on bare scored rock, in the shadow of the endangered sphere. I tried to make the giant hand stop, to make it put the sphere down gently and leave it in peace, but it only lifted the sphere higher.
The sphere dropped. I watched it fall toward me, faster and faster. I touched it, and it crushed me. The sphere shattered and the Fog rolled in. The screams carried in the Fog, I heard them even without ears.

I drifted.

I’m alone now, my fantasies are gone. My garden, my father, my girl. They’re gone. It’s strange to be so alone.

How to Solve All of Our Problems

You know the story about the greek philosopher and the bathtub, yes? I had one of those moments last night at the Medeski, Martin, and Wood show at Starr Hill.
As part of my work with Charlottesville Tomorrow, and to a degree with ASAP, I've been spending a great deal of time watching (with horror) the development trends in Albemarle and surrounding counties. We are being strangled with urban sprawl, ladies and gentlemen. Albemarle's good-intentioned efforts have staved it off somewhat, at least in the county, but it seems to just be rolling out into Greene, Fluvanna, etcetera. If trends continue, the Chicago-New York-DC Megalopolis will slouch south in the next twenty years, swallowing us up and ruining our way of life and economic health. I don't believe I'm exaggerating here, I foresee bad things if major shifts aren't made soon. Even if Albemarle and Charlottesville stay relatively undeveloped, we'll be an island of green in a sea of awful. So that's my fear. I watched it happen in Miami when I was growing up there, and many of you watched it happen in Northern Virginia and elsewhere. The horror.
People want to live in Charlottesville, but because of the way the rules are set up, the only really profitable way to house them is outside the city. Developers buy up surrounding farms cheap, wait a few years, then develop to get the highest price. It's huge money. Dr. Hurt and Wendell Wood didn't become millionaires because they wanted to make our traffic problems impossible and our lives less social and relaxed and physically fit. They wanted to buy low and sell high, like good entrepreneurs.
The way the existing body of laws is set up, developers make the most money by buying low in rural areas surrounding a city, and developing to sell high. They don't make their money selling houses, but in selling land. Developers aren't evil. This came as a bit of a revelation to me, coming from the environmental community, but I believe they simply want to be good entrepreneurs. The challenge then, if we don't want to consume Central Virginia in a sea of awful development and traffic, is to change the laws so that buying low and selling high means compact development in the city. Let's make capitalism work for Charlottesville's future instead of against it.
There are three policies I see as crucial to accomplish this. I assembled them for Charlottesville, but I suspect they would work well in any growing community:

1. A form-based code. This idea was sprung by Duany Plater-Zyberk, the minds behind New Urbanism. Did you see Truman Show? Remember how pretty his town was? That's New Urbanism. Anyway, normal code, Charlottesville's for example, evolved from court battles. People needed to be less bad to prevent lawsuits. So older codes talk about all the bad things developers shouldn't do. Form-based codes talk about all the good things the community wants, and gives developers clear examples and instructions to do it, with easily understood graphics. Reading them is a breath of fresh air for a planner used to older codes. And the beauty of this is that developers are set up to succeed. All the problems that normally come up in the review process are designed out up front, allowing a greatly accelerated approval process. This means developments get a clear timetable and guaranteed public support. Why? Because they're doing what the residents want, from the get-go. Plus, the city saves big bucks on staff time and advertising money for public comment. You can see a beautiful example here. I'm hoping to develop some open-source software in graduate school that allows anyone to almost instantly develop an approved site plan and profitable business plan using this code.

2. Transit that matters. In Charlottesville, people are talking about a streetcar. Other places are talking about bus rapid transit or light rail. What's crucial is a transit system that makes people want to take transit. Most (unprofitable) systems, such as Charlottsville's, serve people who have to take transit because they have no other choice. Everyone else is given excellent roads for their cars, which is the natural choice. Since the gas prices went up, I've been riding the free trolley a great deal, and let me tell you, it ain't competitive. It's extremely undependable, slow, and inconvenient. It's easier for me to drive everywhere. This is wrong. I should have some excellent alternatives, in case I want to be more physically fit, or get outside more, or want to be easier on our air. And in fact, I do. By offering competitive transit, the city becomes a much more attractive place to live, and therefore, a much more attractive place to build. People may cry gentrification at this point, but do you think it's nicer to lower income folks to force them to either live in a house they can't afford close in, or live so far out that they have to drive more than they can afford? Affordability is a big part of this plan, as is diversity. A bus system that only the poor and disabled use, that is clearly inferior to car travel, is not being nice to the lower income folks.

3. Land value tax. A huge reason why developers don't invest in urban areas is that as soon as they invest money in property, it raises the value of the property, and therefore the taxes. As soon as developers put money in, they have to swim upstream to stay profitable. This higher cost is passed on to consumers in various ways, either in the real estate market or hidden in retail prices. Lynchburg and Richmond have somewhat addressed this by offering developers several years with no tax increases when they rehabilitate historic properties. That's a nice thing, and I support it, but I don't believe it goes far enough. I would like to see taxes on all buildings eliminated. Taxes on land would rise to make up for the gap, making this shift revenue neutral. What happens then? Well, development becomes tax-immune. People are free to do whatever they like to their property with no fear of the assessor. In fact, the city can save a great deal of money by canceling real estate assessments. This makes investing in development very very attractive. This could be phased in over several years to ease the market shock.

So that's my recipe for success. If all three elements are enacted at the same time, we'll see a major shift in development away from the suburbs and into the city along with major improvements in housing affordability, lower taxes, better mobility, and a more pleasant, livable city.

I'd almost forgotten I had this blog. For whatever reason, my web browser stopped working with Blogger for a while, and I left it behind. My thanks to Bill Emory for helping me remember its existence.
I am currently working with Charlottesville Tomorrow as an intern and Advocates for a Sustainable Albemarle Population as a web developer. I'm expecting good things of both in the future.

Much as I enjoyed working in the wine department at Foods of All Nations for a year and a half, I must say that working in my area of interest has made me feel alive again. Exciting things are happening. You can see what I'm working on with Charlottesville Tomorrow on the weblog. It's exciting stuff.

Also, the ideas I discussed in my previous posts remain near and dear to me, and I will get to them. However, at the moment I'm focusing on getting my wine distributing company off the ground and my self into graduate school. Much as I've enjoyed interning with Okerlund Associates, Topia Design, Oliver Kuttner, and Charlottesville Tomorrow, I'm anxious to be able to work on my own two feet, and a Masters in Urban Planning is necessary for that.

An Update! So, affordable housing. This is something I've been thinking about since writing a research paper (“Affordable Housing in Charlottesville”) at U.Va. I've got a few ideas, but the one I'm excited about most is called split-rate taxation. The way property tax is now, there's a flat tax applied to the value of a piece of real estate. This taxes land and improvements equally. So, people who build on their land, pay more tax. People who do nothing with their land pay the same tax. This makes land speculation very attractive, since taxes are easily covered by the increasing value of property in places like Charlottesville. So the property tax system encourages people with wealth to buy up land and sit on it, waiting for the price to go up.

Results:

1. Prices go up in town, staying low in the suburbs.

2. Long-time homeowners are priced out of their own neighborhoods, as taxes rise on homes that might not have changed in decades.

3. Development continues to sprawl outward at low densities, increasing traffic, air pollution, water pollution, etc.

4. City revenues slowly increase along with the cost of housing.

5. Some wealthy speculators are given a fairly safe investment.

6. The pace of development in town is slowed, temporarily preserving some nice places.

The way split-rate taxation works, is land and buildings are taxed at different rates. Land is taxed at a higher rate. This turns real estate investment rightside up. In this system, there is great profit in developing, by offsetting high land taxes with low-taxed and high-revenue development. Existing homeowners benefit from lower taxes, especially as housing supply begins to meet demand. City revenues increase along with increased investment in taxable property. Overall urban density increases, improving transit, walkability, and bikeability, reducing travel times, and protecting outlying areas from development. This is also something I recommend for Albemarle's Development Area, but absolutely not in the Rural Area. If anything, the Rural Area should tax homes higher than land, giving farmers a break and slowing down sprawl. Outlying counties should do something along the same lines.
This was done with great success in Pennsylvania.
Also, I have completed a professional website. Behold: Coactive Counseling.

Progress. I went to a fundraiser for John Kerry and two good things happened. First, I learned more about Al Weed. He's running for Virgil Goode's seat in congress. For that reason alone, I support him. Because Goode is a bad, bad man. The other good thing is that I told people about my ideas for Vinegar Hill, and they got excited! I've kept my ideas restricted to my family and this blog up until now, and it's immensely comforting to know someone else agrees with me.
The way I laid it out went like this:
1. The history of Vinegar Hill. A thriving, mostly African American community is leveled. Housing projects to replace some of the eliminated housing are put in many years later. African American-owned businesses are never replaced. African Americans, unlike other minorities (Jews, Italians, Irish, Koreans) in America, have been unable to rise out of poverty as a group. Some argue that this is due to a genetic defect. Others blame institutional racism. In fact, African Americans attempted to do exactly what other minorities in America accomplished: create their own neighborhoods with their own culture and support each other out of the ghetto. All that progress was eliminated when places like Vinegar Hill were destroyed under urban renewal.
2. Race issues today. Charlottesville is the best place to live in America. If you have enough money. Segregation and lack of opportunity for young African Americans persist. There is more awareness of the problem since the recent outbreaks of racial violence, but no solutions are apparent.
3. University-Downtown. Charlottesville has been talked about in terms of its brain (U.Va.) and its heart (Downtown). Local elites have wanted to make the connection through West Main for some time. Coran Capshaw has been most successful with Starr Hill and the housing across the tracks. The city put together the free trolley to support this connection. However, this connection isn't possible, because there's a gaping hole between the two: Vinegar Hill. Heart and head are cut off, because the soul has been ripped out. The intersection with the Lewis & Clark statue is one of the worst intersections I've seen, making bike and pedestrian travel extremely uncomfortable. Car travel moves to two main destinations: either Downtown, or the University. This is all made possible by the Ridge Street connector that was rammed through the Vinegar Hill neighborhood.
4. Downtown's decline. Part of the rationalization for destroying Vinegar Hill was to eliminate competition with Downtown businesses and create opportunities for major new construction to bring people downtown, like the Omni hotel. This kind of worked, but it also routed most traffic around downtown, eliminating its visibility. Tourists visiting downtown can find the Omni, but the pedestrian mall is hidden. This was fantastic for the sprawling growth of 29 North, making it easier to get there from the city.
5. Shadow of the Meadowcreek Parkway. The official rationale for the Parkway is to ease traffic on 29 North and the Rio Road shortcut. In fact, this will happen. However, this will also dump an enormous amount of traffic in city neighborhoods, thanks to that Ridge street connector. It will also make it even easier to get to 29 N from the city, sucking even more business out into the sprawl north of town and worsening traffic in a short time.

Solutions.
1. Reclaim Vinegar Hill. Vinegar Hill is a powerful place. Rich with history and heartbreak, and pivotal to the past, present, and future of Charlottesville. The built form should reflect this. The neighborhood needs to be bought up and redeveloped.
2. Kill the connector. The Ridge street connector only makes sense given the priorities of the 1950s. Given Charlottesville's modern needs, it does more harm than good. The old neighborhood grid will be brought back. The pedestrianized street between Omni and Downtown can be reopened to traffic. This will eliminate some awful pedestrian space and give Downtown excellent visibility.
3. Hold the neighborhood in trust. An urban land trust gives residents all the rights of their land, save actual ownership. This gives them much greater resistance to rising land values due to gentrification. This makes a rich neighborhood of mixed incomes, backgrounds, and perspectives possible.
4. Support local African American business. I'm not sure how yet, but I'd like to see the richness and variety of Vinegar Hill's economy restored. If it's all Starbucks and Blockbusters, it'll be sad.
5. Develop with the community. Vinegar Hill needs to be brought back by Charlottesville working together, rather than by a few developers. Everyone needs to have a say in what happens here. The way to do this is with a design technique called a charette, where everyone involved gets together in a room and hashes it out over a few days, creating something we all want to see happen.

So that's what I've got. If you like it, hate it, want to help, or have a suggestion, e-mail me at WonkoDATaol.com

Finished, finished. I completed my graduate school application to U.Va.'s Department of Urban and Environmental planning. They didn't read my application because it was late and they had a full class. This is great news.
I didn't want to go to graduate school yet. I was frustrated because all of the decent jobs in my field required a masters, but I've realized that isn't a problem. None of the things I want to get accomplished (Helping Friendly Book, Soul Walk, Eco-Industrial Heating Plant, Message) will be at all assisted by having a job in my field. In fact, a job with the city might even be a straightjacket. I'm happy where I am, and I have all the resources I need. Here we go.
I don't think I've mentioned the Soul Walk or the Eco-Industrial Heating Plant here. The Soul Walk is inspired by the Spirit Walk they do every Halloween on the Downtown Mall. The difference is that this takes place in Vinegar Hill and is about that defining time and place in our city's history. It occured to me that if Vinegar Hill hadn't been destroyed, there would be no pressure for the Meadowcreek Parkway. It's amazing how one terrible thing can create opportunities for more terrible things. Destruction supports destruction. On the other hand, wise, humane acts support more of the same.
The Eco-Industrial Heating Plant comes from my studies in sustainability. The U.Va. heating plant burns coal, and is one of the largest polluters in the area. The plant produces steam to heat the University, and as a side effect, it creates acid rain, mercury in our streams, a haze that reduces visibility, and global warming. Which is a shame, because everything that comes out of the coal plant's chimney is a valuable input to other industries. Much of it has to be mined out of the ground and/or created chemically and paid for. So I think there's an opportunity to eliminate a major polluter, cut costs, and create jobs for Charlottesville.

I just finished reading an excellent article by Kurt Vonnegut about the mess we're in. Essentially, he believes, and I agree, that part of what's going on is the end of an intense and destructive national addiction to oil. It's been almost a hundred and fifty years, which is a pretty good run for any addiction, but the good stuff is running out. There's a lot of reason to be worried about that, but I personally find it exciting. Times of transition are challenging and dangerous, but allow for amazing things and historic moments. End oil empire, enter solar economy.

Wow, it's been a month since my last post, and what a month it's been. First, progress on the culture jamming I mentioned. Thanks to the crucial assistance of Mr. Justin O'Dell, I have managed to acquire the majority of the lawn signs from the city council election. I can't remember the exact figures, but the democrat to republican/Meredith Richards write-in ratio was very close. I am lumping together the Richards campaign with the republicans because both happened to use the same kind of lawn sign. Which is interesting. This reminded me of the funding the Bush 2000 campaign provided for Nader ads in swing states.
I noticed a large degree of clumping with the signs, with most neighborhoods having a small number of democrat signs and a few neighborhoods (notably the more wealthy ones on the north side of town) having many republican signs within a small area. We began our collection by sharing a bike around the Woolen Mills neighborhood, stopping repeatedly to grab signs, then hopped in my car for the rest of the neighborhoods.
Since then, my mind has been occupied with returning to school for my graduate degree. I have been struggling with the application for U.Va.'s urban and environmental planning department. I have stressed out far too much over this, but it's almost done. Wish me luck! Once it's over, I promise I'll update more.

I'm doing some Adbusters-inspired culture jamming around the national election. The concept is the posting of terms relating to the Bush record, but without actually mentioning Bush. So you might see a sign that said "Enron" or "Weapons of Mass Destruction" or "Excessive Secrecy" and nothing else. The intent is to create questions and dialogue, about the meaning of the terms, who displayed them, what the intent itself is. I feel a great number of issues are being left out of the national debate, and I'd like to create an alternate forum for them to get out. If you'd like to work on this and other related projects, sign up for the Charlottesville Adbusters Meetup here:

If you'd like to order a FREE sign for your lawn, e-mail me at WonkoD@aol.com. Yes, it's a lame e-mail address. I have to wait 60 days for the helpingfriendlybook.com address to transfer to my new provider.

I'm worried about the city council campaign. I went to the NAACP-sponsored council forum and was struck by the low turn-out and the poor quality of the Republican candidates. Kenneth (Ann Reineke kept calling him "Kenny") Jackson was offensive and ill-informed, and yet powerfully condescending. Reineke actually made some policy statements, focused on the city budget. She said that property taxes were too high and business taxes were too high, and this hurt affordability and the job market. Which I agree with. She also said that police and teachers should get better pay and benefits. Which I also agree with. She also said that the city shouldn't spend $6 million on new software. I think she means the city should stay outdated, but I think Waldo Jaquith's suggestion of pursuing freeware makes a great deal more sense. So I agree with everything she said should happen, but the only way I can imagine her achieving these conflicting priorities of lower taxes and better pay and benefits is by cutting critical social services. As Kevin Lynch pointed out, Charlottesville is the main provider of social services for the entire region of central Virginia. We provide a crucial public good that benefits us and especially our neighbors. This was fine when the nation funded the states and Virginia funded Charlottesville, but since the state went into a budget crisis of its own, and Bush's unfunded educational mandates, we've been left with greater responsibilities and fewer resources to meet them. So I heard two options. The Democrats propose that we maintain the line. We suffer high local taxes and keep Charlottesville a world class city. The Republicans didn't make a clear proposal, but it appears that they wish to mimic the federal and state governments by lowering taxes and cutting services. I understand their position, we've definitely been put in an unfair spot, but I'm unwilling to budge an inch and give up the things that the city pays for that make Charlottesville great. Like the wonderful work that city landscaping does, or what little social safety net we have that keeps homelessness low enough for affluent people to be comfortable in public spaces. This is one of the many things that make the Downtown Mall work, like Friday's After Five. So, I'm backing the Democratic ticket, but I really think that we're going to need some creative solutions and major lobbying at the state and federal level to get Charlottesville back off the financial razor edge that it's been left at. None of candidates seem to be saying this, but my impression of the Republicans ability to work well with city Democrats is very poor. Also, I've been noticing some Meredith Richards write-in signs next to Reineke and Jackson signs. If I were Meredith, I'd be offended. Though it would be ironic if Meredith were elected by Republicans.

I am worn out. The bake sale went great. We raised $811 for campaigning against Bush and other good things. The Free Store went well. It turned out to be part of an Earth Day celebration. Earth Day meant a lot to me when I was a kid, but I feel very disconnected with it now. I'm not sure it's effective any more. There was a time when corporations would use it as an opportunity to showcase the paltry attempts they made to be environmentally friendly, but I'm not sure if even that happens anymore. I'm glad the event happened, but overall I was very discouraged. Still, it gave me the idea to start a permanent Free Store somewhere. I'm trying to think of who would be willing to donate space. I'm looking for a location near downtown that has some visibility and some public awareness. I'm thinking either a church or a charitable organization.

Coming Up: This is going to be a busy weekend. I'm doing two exciting things.
Saturday, April 17th, 12-2 PM Downtown Mall by the water fountain + Cha Cha's: MoveOn's Bake Sale for Democracy! A few dozen friends and I will be selling delicious baked goods benefitting a delicious movement for democracy and regime change in DC complements of MoveOn.org!
Sunday, April 18th, 12:30 PM Tonsler Park, corner of 5th and Cherry: Food Not Bombs Feed In! I think, I'm not totally sure what's going on. But I do know that I'm running a Free Store! What's a Free Store, you ask? Aren't the terms "free" and "store" mutually exclusive? Probably. A free store is a place where people leave good things that they don't want and take things that they do want. So if I get tired of my red chair, but don't have anyone to sell or give it to, I would put it in the Free Store. Then if I saw a good book there, I would take it. When I finished, I would put it back, and someone else would take it. A Free Store saves money and the environment by reducing waste, extending the use of products, and providing useful goods at an unbeatable price. Of course, a big part of what makes a Free Store work is it being in the same place for a long time. Otherwise it's just me giving away my things and talking about how nice a free store would be. But hey, it's a start.