Good morning, RVA! It's 44 °F, and today looks crisp! You can expect a partly cloudy sky with the extremely fall-like temperatures topping out right around 60 °F. Things’ll warm up a bit as the week progresses, but, for today, I’d definitely recommend wrapping up in a couple of layers.
Water cooler
The City’s Planning Commission meets today, and you can check out their full agenda here. Scroll down a bit, and you’ll find ORD. 2023-281, which would amend the City’s Master Plan (aka Richmond 300) to classify all of Richmond’s public housing neighborhoods as “priority neighborhoods.” You can look through the entirely new Priority Neighborhoods chapter of the Master Plan in this massive PDF (starting on p. 83) and see some of the next steps for each neighborhood. In addition to the new chapter, a bunch of the Plan’s existing goals have been updated to include the new priority neighborhoods. Where Richmond 300 currently suggests developing new parks at “nodes” (remember, those are interesting places across the city where development can/should/is happening), it would now suggest we develop new parks at “nodes and priority neighborhoods.” I’ve only skimmed through the new chapter and the updated goals, but it’d be cool to have full-throated support for preserving and building more public housing.
Also related to Richmond 300, the City wants to put together a Cultural Resources Management Plan to “identify, preserve, and promote stewardship of a community’s cultural assets and historic resources.” The public portion of this process kicks off tonight with a meeting at 6:00 PM at the Main Library (101 E. Franklin Street), and, because every public process must, there is an accompanying survey that you can fill out. I thought this survey was kind of intense!—with its interesting Rorschach test of “which of the images above show historic buildings, sites, or place,” and, even more intense, “which of the buildings, sites, or places above are worthy of protection/preservation.” Yikes! “worthy” is such loaded language! I also didn’t love the zero-sum framing of “development/density pressure” as a threat to historic resources and communities—I don’t think this is an either/or! Like, old stuff is cool, for sure, but also we need to build more housing for people that are alive now.
Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense has posted the third installment in his spicy series about VCU’s now-failed attempt to redevelop the old Public Safety Building site. My favorite part is definitely when the emails BizSense obtained through FOIA reference BizSense’s inevitable future reporting. I’ve really enjoyed this series—it’s as close as I’ll get to being a fly on the wall during some of Richmond’s most interesting conversations.
This is pretty neat, via RPS Superintendent Jason Kamras on Twitter: “You ever wonder if Bombas actually donates a pair of socks for every pair you buy? Well, RPS just received about 10,000 pairs from them to give to students in need. Thank you!”
Chesterfieldians! Thad Green at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a rundown of the County’s candidates for School Board—and there’s a lot of them. You’ll probably recognize Traci Franssen, running in the Matoaca district, from a past GMRVA when she encouraged everyone out there thinking about running for office to get serious and make it happen!
This morning's longread
How Millennials Grew Up and Got Old
Anne Helen Petersen writes about millennials getting older (and wiser??) as they all start to approach middle age. I liked this new-to-me concept of being “washed,” which is artfully described as “You haven't been to that particular new restaurant yet, but you've heard it's nice.”
There’s nothing wrong with feeling older. I like it here; I know a lot of you do, too. But as our generation ages, we have to be vigilant about the ways in which fatigue and fear can blot out even the brightest hopes for a different, more equitable world. Because even if you do find a modicum of security, it’s still not going to feel like enough. You’ll want more, and that won’t feel like enough either. When you’re this conditioned to precarity, no personal safety net is ever robust enough to actually make you feel safe. You need something much more robust: something that’s built for and supported by, well, everyone.
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Picture of the Day
Fern (yarrow) gully.
