#City Planning Department

[monsterfactoryfanfic]

My latest essay is about city building games! I cover 6 different games, discussing resource allocation, district usage, and the ways people shape the place they live!

Transcript here.

Games discussed include:

City Planning Department by Kaelan Doyle-Myerscough, Andrew Tran, Alex Dawson, William Wu, Paul Geldart, and Raul Altosaar

The Quiet Year by Avery Alder

Ex Novo by Martin Nerurkar and Konstantinos Dimopoulos

We, the City by Teo Kai Xiang

I Went to Bourbon, Indiana Once by Beth Jackson

Tales of a City by Hessan Yongdi

[fatt-twitter-updates]

The Road to PALISADE 20: City Planning Department

10:58 PM PST, 19 January 2023 (Source)

[kyreniacommentator]

Girne's Amended Environmental Plan Discussed

[ainawgsd]

🫤

[nonooddo]

Free promotion for PONA

Rally against the Oddo Apartments

This Monday - March 11 -

6.00 pm at Olathe City Hall

[l33tsaber]

Ha, community health survey.

"What would make your community a healthier place for you and your family?"

COMMUTER.

RAIL.

[strayheat]

it's okay guys we just have to get through thursday and friday we're good

[911-on-abc]

I don’t use my full name in this app cuz I’m a somewhat known content creator in my country sjdjdjdjdjkdkdkss I don’t need nosy people reading & criticizing my gay porn

hahaha that's such a good secret! wow. I'm kind of stunned. we have a celebrity in our midst lmao

I don't think anyone uses their full name on this app unless they are like, Neil Gaiman, although maybe your first name is really unique?? but I totally get what you mean about nosy people finding ur account... like I'm even hesitant to share the city I'm from cause what if? you know?

thanks for the ask anon!!!

[caymannewsservice]

CEC aims to shut down objectors to transformed PAD

Artist’s rendition of Signal House, the original anchor building for the CEC campusFlooding at the nearby Vienna Circle (CNS): Cayman Enterprise City (CEC) is hoping to eventually secure planning permission for a new, completely transformed planned area development (PAD) application on a site located off the Linford Pierson Highway in seasonally flooded mangrove forests. Continue reading CEC…

[detroitography]

Map: Detroit Consolidated HUD Plan 1995

I stumbled across this 1995 HUD plan from when the Planning and Development Department was still on the 23rd floor of Cadillac Tower. I can’t figure out why the Detroit Receiving Hospital is not called out as a point of interest, but enjoy seeing many of the community hospitals marked. From the report: The City of Detroit’s Consolidated Plan includes a one-year Action Plan for the expenditure…

[fatt-twitter-updates]

Friends at the Table Retweeted:

Kaelan 🍵🏝️☁️ The Archipelago is OUT ON STEAM! @kaelanDM (also @kaelandm):

@Friends_Table PLAYED ONE OF MY GAMES 😱

i jammed it with @ATranimal @lark_annex @willyvvu @Astrolopemusic !! in case anyone needs/wants to know

[Quote retweeting a Friends at the Table tweet about a Road to Palisade live recording where they played City Planning Department.]

6:15 PM PDT, 14 December 2022 (Source)

|

Friends at the Table Retweeted:

Kaelan 🍵🏝️☁️ The Archipelago is OUT ON STEAM! @kaelanDM (also @kaelandm):

i forgot to mention the game. i was too excited. it was City Planning Department

6:26 PM PDT, 14 December 2022 (Source)

[theautomatedparkingcompany]

Hope you're having a great day. One of the most challenging aspects of getting an automated parking system approved is navigating the city fire departments, and we have a lot of experience with it.

If you look in my background here, this is a document that we put together to consult with the fire departments and show them fire sprinkler recommendations, along with your fire consultant.

We have a lot of experience working with cities all over the United States, from cities that are more challenging, like Boston, the city of Los Angeles, to a system we recently installed in Wisconsin. Only took one meeting with the fire department.

We're here to support you all along the way, from design through installation and getting you AHJ and fire approvals. Let me know how we can support.

TheAutomatedParkingCompany.com

#automatedparking #cityapproval

[sayruq]

Israel is setting up a complex system of checkpoints that will prevent men of “military age” from fleeing Rafah in preparation for its offensive on the southern Gaza border city, a senior western official familiar with Israel’s plans has told Middle East Eye on condition of anonymity. The checkpoints are designed to allow some women and children to leave Rafah ahead of an expected Israeli offensive, but unarmed, civilian Palestinian men will likely be separated from their families and remain trapped in Rafah during an expected Israeli assault. The previously unreported disclosure of Israel’s construction of a ring of checkpoints around Rafah underscores how Israel is pushing ahead with plans to attack the city where over one million displaced Palestinians are sheltering in tents and makeshift camps. The creation of gender-based checkpoints around Rafah would put a spotlight back on Israel’s practice of stripping and forcibly detaining male Palestinian men and children, as it faces rising scrutiny in the West of its conduct in the war. The rounding up of Palestinian males in Gaza and photographing them stripped to their underwear drew condemnation in December, with the US calling the images “deeply disturbing”. Relatives of many of the men photographed recognised them and said they had nothing to do with Hamas. Israel's military was later accused of staging footage of men surrounding weapons. “Israel considers every male a Hamas fighter until proven otherwise,” Abbas Dahouk, a former senior military advisor at the State Department and military attache in the Middle East told Middle East Eye. “It’s not a sound move. Cordoning Rafah is a daunting task and good luck separating fathers and sons from their families.”

[reasonsforhope]

As relentless rains pounded LA, the city’s “sponge” infrastructure helped gather 8.6 billion gallons of water—enough to sustain over 100,000 households for a year.

Earlier this month, the future fell on Los Angeles. A long band of moisture in the sky, known as an atmospheric river, dumped 9 inches of rain on the city over three days—over half of what the city typically gets in a year. It’s the kind of extreme rainfall that’ll get ever more extreme as the planet warms.

The city’s water managers, though, were ready and waiting. Like other urban areas around the world, in recent years LA has been transforming into a “sponge city,” replacing impermeable surfaces, like concrete, with permeable ones, like dirt and plants. It has also built out “spreading grounds,” where water accumulates and soaks into the earth.

With traditional dams and all that newfangled spongy infrastructure, between February 4 and 7 the metropolis captured 8.6 billion gallons of stormwater, enough to provide water to 106,000 households for a year. For the rainy season in total, LA has accumulated 14.7 billion gallons.

Long reliant on snowmelt and river water piped in from afar, LA is on a quest to produce as much water as it can locally. “There's going to be a lot more rain and a lot less snow, which is going to alter the way we capture snowmelt and the aqueduct water,” says Art Castro, manager of watershed management at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. “Dams and spreading grounds are the workhorses of local stormwater capture for either flood protection or water supply.”

Centuries of urban-planning dogma dictates using gutters, sewers, and other infrastructure to funnel rainwater out of a metropolis as quickly as possible to prevent flooding. Given the increasingly catastrophic urban flooding seen around the world, though, that clearly isn’t working anymore, so now planners are finding clever ways to capture stormwater, treating it as an asset instead of a liability. “The problem of urban hydrology is caused by a thousand small cuts,” says Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute at UC Berkeley. “No one driveway or roof in and of itself causes massive alteration of the hydrologic cycle. But combine millions of them in one area and it does. Maybe we can solve that problem with a thousand Band-Aids.”

Or in this case, sponges. The trick to making a city more absorbent is to add more gardens and other green spaces that allow water to percolate into underlying aquifers—porous subterranean materials that can hold water—which a city can then draw from in times of need. Engineers are also greening up medians and roadside areas to soak up the water that’d normally rush off streets, into sewers, and eventually out to sea...

To exploit all that free water falling from the sky, the LADWP has carved out big patches of brown in the concrete jungle. Stormwater is piped into these spreading grounds and accumulates in dirt basins. That allows it to slowly soak into the underlying aquifer, which acts as a sort of natural underground tank that can hold 28 billion gallons of water.

During a storm, the city is also gathering water in dams, some of which it diverts into the spreading grounds. “After the storm comes by, and it's a bright sunny day, you’ll still see water being released into a channel and diverted into the spreading grounds,” says Castro. That way, water moves from a reservoir where it’s exposed to sunlight and evaporation, into an aquifer where it’s banked safely underground.

On a smaller scale, LADWP has been experimenting with turning parks into mini spreading grounds, diverting stormwater there to soak into subterranean cisterns or chambers. It’s also deploying green spaces along roadways, which have the additional benefit of mitigating flooding in a neighborhood: The less concrete and the more dirt and plants, the more the built environment can soak up stormwater like the actual environment naturally does.

As an added benefit, deploying more of these green spaces, along with urban gardens, improves the mental health of residents. Plants here also “sweat,” cooling the area and beating back the urban heat island effect—the tendency for concrete to absorb solar energy and slowly release it at night. By reducing summer temperatures, you improve the physical health of residents. “The more trees, the more shade, the less heat island effect,” says Castro. “Sometimes when it’s 90 degrees in the middle of summer, it could get up to 110 underneath a bus stop.”

LA’s far from alone in going spongy. Pittsburgh is also deploying more rain gardens, and where they absolutely must have a hard surface—sidewalks, parking lots, etc.—they’re using special concrete bricks that allow water to seep through. And a growing number of municipalities are scrutinizing properties and charging owners fees if they have excessive impermeable surfaces like pavement, thus incentivizing the switch to permeable surfaces like plots of native plants or urban gardens for producing more food locally.

So the old way of stormwater management isn’t just increasingly dangerous and ineffective as the planet warms and storms get more intense—it stands in the way of a more beautiful, less sweltering, more sustainable urban landscape. LA, of all places, is showing the world there’s a better way.

-via Wired, February 19, 2024

[batboyblog]

Things the Biden-Harris Administration Did This Week #37

Oct 4-11 2024

President Biden announced a new EPA rule that will require all lead pipes in America's drinking water systems to be replace with-in 10 years. This builds on the $15 billion the Biden-Harris Administration has already invested in replacing lead pipes nation wide. The administration's focus on this issue has allowed local governments to greatly execrate their lead pipe replacement plans, before Biden took office the city of Milwaukee's timeline for replacing its lead pipes was 60 years, they're now on track to do it in 10. The EPA says there's no safe level of lead in the human body.

Vice President Harris announced she plans to expand Medicare to cover home health care. Currently those who need long term care, are covered by Medicaid, the health program for the poor so have to spend all their savings before they can qualify. This change would allow more seniors to stay in their homes and offer support to caregiving family members. Medicare also covers the disabled thus proving a game changer for the disabled Americans and their families. The Vice President also endorsed expanding Medicare to cover the costs of hearing and vision care.

Medicare released a preliminary list of 101 generic drugs which it would cover that would cost no more than $2 for a month for enrollees. People have long lobbied to allow Medicare to pay for generic drugs which has been resisted by drug companies. Thanks to President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, and in line with a Biden Executive Order Medicare is now working on bring low cost generic drugs to seniors. The list targets some of the most common prescriptions thus will bring savings to the most people.

Domestic Policy Advisor Neera Tanden announced that the Biden-Harris Administration had blown past its goal of hiring 250,000 student support staff for 2024. The joint effort by the Department of Education, AmeriCorps and Everyone Graduates Center managed to hire 320,000 tutors, mentors, student success coaches, postsecondary transition coaches, and student support coordinators nationwide, its goal for the end of 2025.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced $420 million to help get rid of lead paint and other lead hazards from homes. HUD estimates that over 3 million households that have children under the age of 6 live with lead hazards. HUDs grants will go to all 50 states, DC, and Puerto Rico with particular focus on low income housing.

[nerdie-faerie]

I'm tryna sort out travel for the month between accommodation tenancies and I can travel home at a reasonable and time but to come back I either have to get a coach at 7am or arrive at 5am 😭 it's not looking good