Happy 90th Birthday!

From 2011 04 Wisconsin

For all photos, look here.

Excerpts: The Triumph of the City

Amazon

From "The Triumph of the City," by Edward Glaeser:

Excoriating the exurbs is a popular intellectual pastime, but the people who moved to the suburbs weren’t fools. The friends of cities would be wiser to learn from Sunbelt sprawl than to mindlessly denigrate its inhabitants."

After the jump, my review and more excerpts.

What's Wrong with East Texas?

After the jump, two stories out of East Texas caught my attention today.

Richardson Idol: Week Three

Tight security for Wednesday night's show

Richardson Idol is growing so much in popularity that this week two episodes aired. Tuesday night's show was jointly sponsored by the Highland Terrace Neighborhood Association and the Neighborhood Protection Alliance of Richardson. Wednesday night's show was sponsored by the Friends of Richardson. Neilsen ratings for each individual night held steady.

Eleven of thirteen contestants vying for the grand prize, a seat on the Richardson City Council, performed on our stage for our judges Tuesday night (absent: Gordon, North). Ten performed Wednesday night (absent: Gordon, North, Mitchell).

As the format requires, it is up to the audience (and by audience, I mean me) to eliminate one contestant each week until we have a council. (The recap of last week's show can be found here.)

But before we hear who will be eliminated this week, let's first hand out superlatives ... after the jump.

Who is NPAR?

Tuesday's candidate forum for the Richardson City Council was co-sponsored by the Neighborhood Protection Alliance of Richardson (NPAR). What is that, you ask. Is "neighborhood protection" just a politically correct way of saying Not-In-My-Back-Yard? (Not really. OK, maybe a little. Maybe more than a little.) Who is NPAR, you ask. Do you mean Maitri and her friends? (Maybe, but NPAR sounds grand, doesn't it? And maybe it's bigger than that, but it's hard to say.)

If you need a scorecard to keep straight all the new political organizations sprouting up in Richardson, you are not alone. The Richardson Coalition. The Richardson Citizens Alliance. The Neighborhood Protection Alliance of Richardson. What most of these have in common is more than a little ambiguity over who all are members and how representative they are of Richardson as a whole.

After the jump, parsing the email from the Neighborhood Protection Alliance of Richardson.

Playing Plano Off Against Richardson

Recently, in response to impending cutbacks in education funding by the Texas state legislature, the Plano school district (PISD) announced plans to layoff 344 employees, including 223 teachers. So far, the Richardson school district (RISD) is hopeful of avoiding needing to take similar drastic action in Richardson.

After the jump, what should we make of this difference?

Shanghai Traffic Alert

OK, this one is more than a little unfair and culturally insensitive, but the following traffic alert caught my eye and I can't resist passing on my reaction.

"EastDay.com: Urban traffic is expected to face increased congestion for the rest of this month, caused by seasonal and other special events, local traffic authorities said yesterday. During the two weeks prior to the Qingming Festival on April 5, or China's traditional tomb-sweeping day, travel demand will surge. Drivers should avoid using the Shanghai-Nanjing and Shanghai-Jiaxing expressways, especially in the rush hours, during this time, officials said yesterday.

After the jump, about that tomb-sweeping day.

Andrew Laska's Commentary on Richardson's 2011 Elections

Andrew Laska is the President of Richardson Heights Neighborhood Association. He is the publisher of the Richardson Echo, an online news source for Richardson (that unfortunately looks like it has been moribund since early 2010). He is a co-founder of Preservation Richardson, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving a digital history of Richardson. He probably has a few more lines in his resume that I'm not aware of, but that will do for the purposes of this blog item.

Laska sent the following email promising to pass along his opinions about the upcoming Richardson City Council election. He doesn't say much in this first email, but promises that more opinions are to come. He also encourages recipients to pass it along, which is why I'm reposting it here.

After the jump, Andrew Laska's commentary.

"Tree the Town" vs "Trash the Town"

The Richardson City Council election has spilled over onto the D/FW local news, with Diana Clawson, candidate for Place 7, complaining to Channel 5 about Richardson's "Tree the Town" initiative. Critics of the city are piling on, saying they aren't against trees, they just want to know how much the program is going to cost.

After the jump, how much will it cost?

OTBR: Pinyon-Juniper Woodland in the Uintah Basin

Latitude: 40.3128 N
Longitude: 110.4005 W

A child on a road trip with his family asks, "Where are we?" and the father answers, "Let's check the map. We're off the blue roads [the Interstate Highways marked in blue on the road atlas]. We're off the red roads [the US and state highways]. We're off the black roads [the county highways]. I think we're off the map altogether." It was always my dream to be off the map altogether.

After the jump, a few of the random places (and I mean random literally) that I visited vicariously last month that are "off the blue roads".