Good morning, RVA! It's 66 °F, and it’s rainy. In fact, the current weather forecast suggests that it’ll continue to rain for most of the day and then straight on through most of the weekend, too. It’s gonna be a soggy next couple of days—keep an eye out for breaks in the weather to get outside or do your best mushroom impression and start working on your backlog of movies and TV shows.
Water cooler
The election results are in, and some of them are fascinating. The Virginia Public Access Project is, as always, the best place to find and explore yesterday’s election data, and they’ve got all of the results nicely sorted into Close Races, Senate, House, and Local. Of note in our region: Current 3rd District Councilmember Anne Francis Lambert lost her House of Delegates race to Rae Cousins by a wide margin, Glenn Sturtevant edged out Virginia’s Trumpyiest senator Amanda Chase, Lamont Bagby coasted to victory over Katie Gooch, and Lashrecse Aird absolutely dominated Joe Morrissey. That last one in particular is big, good news. Assuming Democrats hold on to all the necessary seats in the Senate, the one anti-choice (and tie-breaking) Democrat likely to side with Republicans on bills restricting abortions just got the boot. Graham Moomaw at the Virginia Mercury has some more flavor from last night’s elections, including this lovely quote from a Petersburg resident about Aird: “She’s just an overall better human being.”
Jahd Khalil at VPM reports that VPM has plans to move its headquarters downtown and build a new facility on the southern side of Broad Street between 1st and Foushee Streets. Tap through to see some really beautiful renderings of what could take the place of a currently wasteful surface-level parking lot (see below about “places vs. non-places”). VPM hopes to raise funds to break ground by early 2024, so, unfortunately, we still have to live with the parking lot for a while longer.
Delaney Murray at WRIC reports that the RPS School Board voted on four school renamings last night: George Wythe High is now Richmond High School for the Arts, John B. Cary Elementary is now Lois Harrison-Jones Elementary, Ginter Park Elementary is now Frances W. McClenney Elementary, and Binford Middle is now Dogwood Middle. They certainly didn’t hew too closely to my Plants and Places, not People rule!
Someone on /r/rva just discovered Sally Bell’s potato salad for the first time, and I’m really stoked for this new addition to their life. In the comments, though, someone points out this recipe for “Better Than Sally Bell’s Potato Salad,” Bold claim! But interesting enough that I’m going to add it to the menu for next week.
This weekend, if the weather holds, the Partnership for Smarter Growth will host a walking tour from City Hall to Capital Ale House previewing a bunch of the planned pieces of the City Center redevelopment. In additional to PSG folks, Adrienne Torres (GRTC’s Chief Development Officer) and Brantley Tyndall (Director of Bike Walk RVA) will tag along, so queue up all of your bus- and bike-related questions, like “How would a new north-south BRT connect to downtown?” and “Which bridge will the Fall Line Trail take across the river and will it somehow feel less harrowing than Richmond’s current river-crossing experience?” The event is free, but you can and should register over on the Eventbrite.
This morning's longread
Places and Non-Places
This article in Strong Towns definitely inspired yesterday’s pinked-in map of the intersection of Arthur Ashe Boulevard and Broad Street, and now I want to calculate the place vs. non-place ratios mentioned in the piece. Quick, someone teach me how to count pixels by color in an image so I can make this happen!
I encourage you to make maps like these of your own city. You can imply a lot from such a simple comparison. Some Non-Places are necessary infrastructure, but a good city planner should attempt to minimize the amount of Non-Place as much as possible. Is there something better we could have in lieu of some of those Non-Places?As a pedestrian, Non-Places use up valuable land area, spacing out the destinations around them, potentially being obstacles that must be walked around, on land that could be used as potential destinations, themselves. As an urbanist, Non-Places use up valuable land area that could instead be used for productive, tax-generating Places. If you care about walkability or getting your money's worth out of your infrastructure, then you should care about minimizing the Non-Places in your city. Treat land as if it is the most valuable commodity your city has.
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Picture of the Day
Northside’s Great Bamboo Die Off!
