🧩 Good morning, RVA: 625↗️ • 15↘️; zoning is a buzzkill; and local polling

Good morning, RVA! It’s 58 °F, and we’re heading into, at least, day three of excellent weather. Expect highs right around 80 °F with plenty of sun in the sky. Love it!

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 625↗️ new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 15↘️ new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 52↘️ new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 12, Henrico: 25, and Richmond: 15). Since this pandemic began, 379 people have died in the Richmond region. Hey, did you put COVIDWISE on your phone yet? As with a lot of things public health, COVIDWISE only works if…a lot of the public…really participates. If you’ve got concerns about privacy (see today’s longread!), I hear you, but would encourage you to read through the FAQs over on VDH’s website. Also, the app is open source and based on a standard created by Apple and Google (maybe see today’s longread again 😬). Anyway, downloading an app is literally the easiest way to do your part and help keep your neighbors safe and healthy, and you should do it today if you have not already!

Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense reports on Planning Commission’s meeting from this past Monday. He says that the Commission voted in favor of both Richmond 300 (yay!) and the proposed changes to B-3 zoning (also yay!). I’m fascinated by the next steps for Richmond 300 which have it “introduced to council Nov. 9, with a final vote anticipated at its Dec. 14 meeting.” That’s, obviously, after the election and just a couple of weeks before New Council would take office. I can’t decided if Current Council will want to punt such an important vote to New Council, or if they’ll see it as finalizing the large amount of work done during their existing terms. Also, I do have a tiny bit of concern—even with a theoretically more progressive New Council—that some of the new folks would want to take the plan apart again to put their own stamp on it. I think I’d prefer to just get the thing voted on, in the books, and have New Council move straight into The Most Stressful Budget Season Of Our Lives.

This story in the Richmond Times-Dispatch by Holly Prestidge is a reminder that your locality’s zoning ordinance definitely covers signage. Folks in Chesterfield put up a large BLM sign on their property (78 total square feet) and quickly found out that the County’s zoning code only allows for 14 square feet of signage or less. Zoning! Buzzkill and segregation tool all wrapped up into one! Luckily, I don’t think the County’s zoning ordinance has much to say about projection art, which the same couple has used to display massive, billboard-sized messages on the front of their dang house.

Not surprising: The organic explosion of Scott’s Addition has started (continues?) to spill over into Greater Scott’s Addition (aka the area back behind the Diamond). Richmond BizSense’s Mike Platania says Spy Rock Real Estate Group has purchased a couple properties for office space and mixed-use—including a bunch of land adjacent to Hardywood. Encouraging these developments to adhere to the Greater Scott’s Addition Framework Plan that’s part of Richmond 300 would be another great reason to get the update to the master plan passed through Council as quickly as possible.

Marc Cheatham has another great post up on the Cheats Movement, this one about local polling. His opening graf made me laugh, “A note about local polls: DON’T TRUST THEM!…Polls give media and bloggers like me something to talk about, something to frame the upcoming election on, but here is the deal: LOCAL POLLS ARE WRONG.” Cheatham digs up the 2016 polls, and, after reading and remembering how we all thought Joe Morrissey would win outright, you’ll probably agree with Cheatham on the accuracy of local polling at least a little bit. Cheatham also lays out his district-by-district mayoral predictions, which, I’m going to noodle on before I agree or disagree too hard. I’m with him on this, though: “I think someone takes 5 on Election Day.”

Make way! Here it comes! Ring bells! Bang the drums! Trader Joe’s will open their new Southside store (Store #786) this Friday. You won’t catch me anywhere near that place for the next several weeks as I know how Richmonders feel about both new grocery stores generally and Trader Joe’s specifically. I would not be surprised if people had already—three days out—started a socially-distanced queue in front of the building.

This morning’s patron longread

How to Destroy ‘Surveillance Capitalism’

Submitted by Patron Sam. Today’s longread is a literal small book! If you’re interested in tech, monopolies, capitalism, or digital privacy, I think you’ll enjoy—maybe that’s the wrong word, appreciate?—this longread.

All these solutions assume that tech companies are a fixture, that their dominance over the internet is a permanent fact. Proposals to replace Big Tech with a more diffused, pluralistic internet are nowhere to be found. Worse: The “solutions” on the table today require Big Tech to stay big because only the very largest companies can afford to implement the systems these laws demand. Figuring out what we want our tech to look like is crucial if we’re going to get out of this mess. Today, we’re at a crossroads where we’re trying to figure out if we want to fix the Big Tech companies that dominate our internet or if we want to fix the internet itself by unshackling it from Big Tech’s stranglehold. We can’t do both, so we have to choose.

If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.

This morning’s Instagram