Good morning, RVA! It's 61 °F, and today looks a little warmer than yesterday and also comes with a chance for some thunderstorms later this evening. Enjoy today and get ready for a really wonderful tomorrow.
Water cooler
Just a few corona-updates for you this Tuesday morning. First, here’s this week’s look at all-time cases, hospitalizations, and deaths due to COVID-19. It’s still too soon to tell if Delta’s tide has truly started to turn in Virginia, but it’s certainly not trending upwards at the moment. Second, the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts will now give Pfizer booster shots at any of their vaccination clinics. While you need an appointment for a booster, folks who are still unvaccinated can (and should!) just walk up to get their shot. I imagine most pharmacies around town have also started offering boosters for folks who qualify, so, if you’re eligible, you’ve probably got a ton of options to go get boosted.
On September 30th (this coming Thursday), Councilmember Lambert will host a community meeting to discuss, among other things, the parklet planned for the 100 block of Brookland Park Boulevard, out front of Ms. Bee’s Juice Bar. I’m confused and frustrated by this since Council’s Urban Design Committee already recommended the parklet for approval at their April 8th meeting and then the City’s Planning Commission approved the parklet at their April 19th meeting. As far as I know, that’s all that’s needed to get a parklet installed, and I’m not sure what’s left to talk about on Thursday (other than how rad parklets are). I have some pretty strong feelings about a councilmember getting involved at the tail end of an already approved project and subverting the existing public process. The 3rd District has already had its fair share of this (remember Councilmember Grey and the Big Brook Road Bike Lane Fight), and I’m not stoked to have to expend a ton of effort defending projects that have already been approved multiple times. Alas, this is the unfortunate timeline we live in, and if you want to let Councilmember Lambert know you support the Brookland Park Boulevard parklet, show up on Thursday, September 30th at 6:30 PM at the Richmond Police Training Academy (1202 W. Graham Road).
Related, and it’s too late to do anything about it, but according to this thread on Next Door (😱), the concrete bump outs on Brookland Park Boulevard have been / are in the process of being removed. Bump outs are concrete islands that narrow streets, slowing traffic and making the crossing distance for people on foot or bike shorter and safer. They’re also great places to put trees and plants to provided shade and soak up rain water. The new bump outs at Dock and 21st are excellent example, and I am very thankful for them. The ones on Brookland Park Boulevard, though...well, to be completely honest, they were probably too small to really slow traffic and needed to be expanded, not removed. I don’t know if there’s a bigger, better plan to slow speeds on Brookland Park Boulevard, or if we’ve just decided fast, dangerous, and hot is how that corridor should remain for the foreseeable future. You could probably bring this up at Councilmember Lambert’s meeting on Thursday (or send her an email), too, if you wanted.
A couple weeks ago I wished aloud for someone to put together a spreadsheet comparing City Council’s and the Mayor’s plans for all of that ARPA money. A helpful reader pointed me towards Councilmember Larson’s newsletter which linked to this spreadsheet put together by Council itself! Check out the “COUNCIL COMPOSITE LIST” sheet for a look at how the Mayor did or did not fund Council’s priorities—priorities that total almost $415 million, about two and a half times the amount of actual ARPA money the City will get. Clearly lots of compromising and cutting left to do on Council’s side. Speaking of which, if you’d like to get involved in that compromising-and-cutting process, don’t forget to take the City’s Draft Spending Plan Feedback survey if you haven’t already. You have until October 4th to do so.
This morning's longread
Luxury Supertowers Are Going Even Higher (Don’t Mind the Swaying!)
Sometimes physics is like, “Fine, you want to build kilometer-tall buildings? But can you even pump concrete that high?”
Another component of concrete innovation is how high up mixers can send the material before it sets in the tube. During Burj construction, crews had to pump concrete up almost 2,000 feet—and the pumps’ limits put an upper bound on the structure. Now tweaks to the substance’s composition and improvements in pumping have made it possible to send concrete up more than 3,000 feet. “There are all these technical issues that are constantly challenged,” Smith says. “Once you reach a solution you say, ‘OK, can we go higher?’ ” Similarly the Dubai building’s elevators maxed out at 123 stories a decade ago, because of the limits on the strength of the elevator cables. Carbon-fiber cables now enable elevators to travel 160 stories.
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