Barack Obama paid my neighborhood a visit last night. I’d have offered him something to drink, maybe a dog on the grill if he was up for it, but it wasn’t that kind of visit. We watched the motorcade of 5 rolling disco troopers, two buses, and some number of cars from the bluff overlooking the Mississippi just where they all turned towards the large Xcel Center arena and the bubbling crowds.
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Category Archives: Urban Life
Life in da big city, and in Saint Paul as well.
Hung T-Bar Ceiling
Like anyone, I have a few small things that bug me more than they should. But as fits my status as a curmudgeon, mine is nearly impossible to avoid while being hopelessly esoteric. You see, nothing bothers me more than a hung T-bar ceiling with drop-in acoustical tile.
Scale
Why is it that some large urban projects succeed where others fail? What’s the magic formula for revitalizing cities?
While I doubt there’s any one formula that can be applied everywhere, I do think that there are lessons that can be learned everywhere, in cities all across the globe. Having been around just a little bit, I also like to think I learned a few of them firsthand.
Invisible Hand on the Pump
Gasoline prices have spiked to the highest levels ever seen in the USofA, somewhere between $3.60 and $3.80 per gallon (about $1.00 per litre). That causes a lot of pain for people who drive 40k miles per year at 20 miles per gallon (pretty close to the average for commuters) and run up a tab of over $600 a month for gasoline alone. But will this change anything? Is there any evidence that higher gasoline prices will encourage conservation?
Electric Motion
I have been thinking about electric cars lately. No, not because I plan to buy one – that would take actual money. It’s partly because we may need a second vehicle in the family just because the local transit system is not very good. It’s also because I saw a few brands of electric cars at the Living Green Expo and was impressed.
Barataria - The work of Erik Hare 