Trevor Acorn 🔰🌹🇺🇸🌎

Twitter is down. What did I miss?

(Y’all didn’t miss anything, don’t worry)

The hidden double standards driving our housing crisis Apartments are safer and more affordable than single-family homes. Why do we treat them like a hazard?

Very comprehensive Vox article on building code research and reform efforts across the country, fearing John Zeanah’s report for the Center for Building on low-rise multifamily housing and Michael Eriksen’s academic work on building code costs www.vox.com/future-perfe... (gift link)

Dude let me know when you need a structural engineer. But also, if you do it right, you won’t need someone like me at all

Why are single-stair buildings actually SAFER than two stair buildings in some circumstances?

It seems counter intuitive… obviously, more redundancy is better, right?

Single stair passes in Austin!

They got my dad. Someone needs to write about this.

Drake's gonna be the first person to ever lose a Super Bowl halftime show.

Best half time show I’ve ever seen and not even close.

My thought is you start incrementally in the most urban areas or areas nearest transit.

In Tucson that’s probably the neighborhoods around the university. Broad scale upzoning for 3-4 stories mixed use.

I’m huge fan of the Barcelona blocks and the EU style courtyard housing.

We should absolutely change our zoning to promote and allow this style of building development.

I asked a local small scale developer (who owns over 100 small commercial properties in the urban core of Kansas City) what he thinks about the recent road diets done along his properties…

…he absolutely loves them. Great for business. “Let’s do it everywhere”

!!!!

Let’s go!

omg everyone must hate us now hahahaha

Sometimes I google e-bikes just so my social media feeds feed me pictures of beautiful e-bikes. Could be worse. I’m not actually in the market for a new bike but no one needs to know that.

this is also in my grab bag - eliminating facade modulation and upper level setbacks for mass timber and passivhaus buildings!

these are a legacy of poor urban planning in the 80s/90s that increase costs, embodied carbon, operational carbon, maintenance costs, etc.

elevator reform! @stephenjacobsmith.com

(currently the minute you put in an elevator even in small buildings, it has to be massive and accommodate stretchers - this reduces the number of accessible homes in our state)

Surprised they can still get Fly Ash. With coal power on the way out, fly ash is harder to come by.

The car opened up a new way of building cities and organizing ourselves spacially. That’s the story of the past 100 years.

We now have e-bikes, scooters, and AVs. IMO it’s time to develop new patterns of living/moving based on these technologies. But what does that look like?

Visited a few weeks ago. Very promising!

Site visit day! Mass timber hybrid outside of Atlanta. Structural design by yours truly.

Highway filled with cars

Lines of gridlocked cars

Highway willed with choked lanes of traffic

Massive suburban car-dependant sprawl in low density, single use housing subdivisions

Next time someone tries arguing that it’s “social engineering” (cue ominous music) to give people CHOICES to walk, bike & take public transit in their city, tell them that designing our current car DEPENDENCY has been the largest and most damaging social engineering experiment in human history.

There’s a huge double standard when it comes to funding public transit vs funding highways. It plays out in various ways in how society looks at the costs of building & operating transit vs highways. The result is massive under-investment in transit. 🧵:

we should be concerned about the impacts of social media on kids and teens, but i don’t think we’re worried nearly enough about what it’s doing to middle aged people and seniors

I have 3 teenager boys so of course we’re watching Die Hard tonight. My poor wife.

You know, with free public healthcare, the government would have significant financial incentives to build safe walkable communities. Fewer car crashes = lower healthcare costs. More walking = lower healthcare costs.

Maybe urbanist need to be universal healthcare advocates too.

Cool yeah seems like could build buildings with interior fire rated enclosures for e-bike storage which would be super convenient for residents. Also would allow people to invest in nice bikes with less worry about theft or getting them into their apartment

Probably not tbh

Opportunity costs for that highway cap are incredibly high and no one is talking about it. That’s a lot of money that could have gone into lots of other great projects.

Or even the north loop. Filling it in would be a fraction of the cost and sim if not more benefit.

Anyone else translate car expenses into equivalent e-bikes? I do this all the time

$2000 car repair? That’s like 1.5 e-bikes.

$30k new car? That’s like 20 e-bikes.

Etc.

Maybe they were right! Ultimately they are in a better position to determine that than a politician. Politicians/we should be concerned about the negative impacts of overly large parking on the city, but not on necessarily dictating a minimum amount of parking.

Hot take. The amount of parking a development provides should be determined solely by the developer and their banker.

They are the ones taking the risk and holding the bag.

Why should the government have a say, except, perhaps, to limit large lots for environmental reasons etc?