urbanism

Bonus Oklahoma "city"

Elongated engawa defines this community welfare center in Chiba | Spoon & Tamago

As Japan’s population continues to grow older—one in 10 residents are aged 80 or above—care for the elderly becomes an increasingly important issue. And while elderly populations are typically seen as a burden, there are places around rural Japan that offer glimpses of a more hopeful future. One where innovators and designers are demonstrating what’s possible, not with robotic caregivers, but with a fundamental redesign of what care for the elderly could look like.

Typical nursing homes have always been highly transactional. Families pay the facility an agreed upon rate and, in turn, the facility looks after them until the end of their life, in a secluded area removed from society. But does this truly allow the elderly to live out their life on their own terms? With dignity and respect? Surely there was another way. That was the thinking that led Mr. Ishii, a caretaker who practices a style of care that allows people to live their lives normally, even with serious conditions like dementia, to establish “Long House with an Engawa.”

Located in Chiba prefecture, “Long House with an Engawa” is defined by a long and narrow veranda inspired by an engawa, an element of traditional Japanese architecture that occupies a liminal space between inside and outside. “The building contains outdoor spaces between three main functions,” explains architect Kentaro Yamazaki. “A café and workshop for local residents, a ‘living room’ for the elderly, and a tatami room and bath that echo a traditional hanare (detached room).”

[Continues]

Permanently Deleted

Single track? Yes
Running in middle of street? Yes
Carload freight? Yes
Passenger service? Yes
Electric traction? Yes

MORE OF THIS PLEASE I will not sleep until every town has a little train system like this

[CW: vulgar "humour"]

Nitter

Maybe "just one more lane" could work after all....

Looks like car-centric infrastructure just got a whole lot less sustainable.

A big test of whether privately owned high-speed passenger train service can prosper in the United States has launched. Florida's Brightline runs trains between Miami and Orlando. Stops along the route include Fort Lauderdale, Aventura, Boca Raton and West Palm Beach.

Nitter

I'm listening to a presentation on a gigantic housing grant my city is applying for. (PRO Grant from HUD, if you're familiar). They're proposing spending millions on regulatory reform to promote missing middle housing, which, ok fine, that's a big task in a major city, but that should already have been done in 2023. Other money would go towards vague stuff like an accelerator program for bipoc affordable developers. After all of that, they're proposing only 120 "deeply affordable" (under 30% ami) units with the grant.

We have a shortfall of tens of thousands of those units in our city, and this multimillion dollar federal grant would fund just 120.

JUST FUCKING BUILD PUBLIC HOUSING CO-OPS

I swear the neoliberal public-private partnership brainworms these people have is beyond terminal. "We have to strategically leverage this potential pot of funding" no you fucking don't

Narrow, no sidewalks, almost zero cars, business district with lots of shops...

Also electric freight train carrying carloads in the center of the street. Note that the sitelines on this ancient boxcab are still better than your average commercial truck available in America today.