🚲 Good morning, RVA: Banning guns, building better bike lanes, and large-scale art

Good morning, RVA! It’s 76 °F, and summery weather continues. Today you can expect highs in the upper 80s, some clouds, but probably no real chance of rain. Spend some time today on a proch, deck, or patio.

Water cooler

Yesterday, Mayor Stoney announced that he would introduce legislation banning firearms in city parks and city buildings. This is, of course, not something that’s currently allowed by state law, but the Mayor’s ordinance is intended to take effect should the General Assembly deign to grant localities the tiniest modicum of authority to address gun violence in municipal spaces. I’m into this! I’m double into this quote from the Mayor, too: “Every Richmonder and every Virginian deserves to feel safe. Commonwealth residents have had enough of the spineless leadership on this issue from some of our state lawmakers. If they are unwilling to act, they should move out of the way.” As I’ve said previously in this space, I’m looking for clever, creative, and bold local solutions to (most) state Republicans’ forever-support of gun violence. The Mayor’s ordinance does not “solve” gun violence, but it is definitely not nothing. The text of the ordinance has not hit the City’s website yet, but when it does I’ll make sure to link to the PDF. The General Assembly will reconvene for a special session on gun violence on July 9th.

Emily Thomason has an excellent piece up on Streets Cred about the southern terminus of the Lombardy Street bike lane and how it vomits folks out directly into a stack of parked cars. This makes for a stressful and dangerous merge that I do on the regular while casting withering glares over my shoulder at drivers attempting to squeeze between me and oncoming traffic. I will do this very thing today, in fact. Wish me luck, I guess!

The Science Museum of Virginia has put out a call for proposals for an “original, large-scale iconic exterior artwork reflecting the theme of science and the Museum’s mission.” They’ve got a million dollar budget, so make your pitch awesome and epic (but bound by a 50’ x 50’ x 40’ space, so not too, too epic). Applications are due in October, but they’ll post answers to folks’ questions later in July to help artists tighten their proposals. You can read more details about the project and application process here (PDF).

Sean Gorman at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a good look at Chesterfield’s Midlothian Community Special Area Plan 💸. You can download the 116-page draft plan (PDF) for yourself, if special area plans are your thing. There’s some neat stuff in the plan—as Gorman says, “the plan calls for compact, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods where residents don’t need a car to get around.” But, as you could have probably guessed, there’s a single page about public transit and that’s mostly just a reminder that a regional transportation plan does, in fact, exists. If you’re a Chesterfield resident, consider emailing the County’s planning department and asking for a more thoughtful consideration of what public transit looks like along the Midlothian corridor.

Those regional housing strategy meetings continue tonight with one out in Chesterfield. Spend your evening weighing in on regional housing strategy at Meadowbrook High School (4901 Cogbill Road) from 6:30–8:30 PM, or take this survey from the comfort and relative safety of your own couch.

Yesterday in New York City a Richmond cyclist, Robyn Hightman, was hit and killed by the driver of a delivery truck. On Supermint’s instagram page, you can read some of Hightman’s application to their ambassador program, which does an excellent job explaining why bikes are important: “My bicycle established a sense of independence, strengthened my ability to be self sufficient, and provided me with the confidence necessary to advocate for myself, my rights, and my needs in public space.” Robyn was the 12th cyclist killed in New York City in 2019.

Logistical and programming note! There will be no GMRVA podcast this morning, as I’ve gotta bike down to the Greater Washington Partnership’s Improving Mobility event (see above about that dangerous merge on Lombardy). I guess saying that in this space doesn’t help folks who only subscribe to the podcast. Obviously, I didn’t think this through super well! If you see a confused podcast subscriber out there today wandering the streets, begging for zoning news like someone lost in a desert searching for water…zonnnning, please, zonnnning news…can you let them know what’s up?

This morning’s longread

Inside a Texas Building Where the Government Is Holding Immigrant Children

The New Yorker talked to a lawyer who has been to the southern border concentration camps and has seen the conditions in which our government is (most likely illegally) holding children. The Texas Tribune has a list of organizations that are mobilizing to help children separated from their parents and asylum seekers at the border. They would love to take your money.

And then we started to pull the children who had been there the longest to find out just how long children are being kept there. Children described to us that they’ve been there for three weeks or longer. And so, immediately from that population that we were trying to triage, they were filthy dirty, there was mucus on their shirts, the shirts were dirty. We saw breast milk on the shirts. There was food on the shirts, and the pants as well. They told us that they were hungry. They told us that some of them had not showered or had not showered until the day or two days before we arrived. Many of them described that they only brushed their teeth once. This facility knew last week that we were coming. The government knew three weeks ago that we were coming

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This morning’s Instagram