🛴 Good morning, RVA: RRHA, tactical urbanism, missing scooters

Good morning, RVA! It’s 30 °F, and highs today will settle in the mid 40s. Expect rain, though! The chance for rain increase steadily from now until tomorrow. Cold and wet, but not cold enough for snow—the worst.

Water cooler

Yasmine Jumaa at VPM says that HUD has rejected RRHA’s five-year plan. RRHA says the plan was rejected on some technicalities, HUD, however, disagrees. I continue to not know enough about public housing, especially the efficacy of voucher programs vs. building one-for-one replacement units. Regardless of policy direction, stories like this don’t help build trust in an important agency who just hired a new CEO a few months ago.

Tactical urbanism is neat and cool, and—if done properly—should show how cheap, quick improvements can make the lives of folks living in our city easier and safer. A couple weeks back, Streets Cred rolled out our first tactical urbanism project: Untitled Urbanism Project #1, aka The Festive Cones project. To quote a bit: “Tactical urbanism is about demonstrating what could be if you—actually, your city leaders—had the necessary funding, political will, and/or creative design that they lack. Sometimes, it can just help open folks’ eyes to easy ways to make our city safer, more humane, and more fun. Sometimes, it helps build momentum toward [a] long-term solution. And, sometimes, it’s just a fun release of creative energy.” This project was super fun and super cheap but not super free. With that in mind, Untitled Urbanism Project #2 will cost us $300 and you can contribute over on our GoFundMe.

Kim Bobo, who literally wrote the book on organizing, has a column over at the Virginia Mercury about the New Dem Majority’s chance to improve the Commonwealth’s pretty terrible labor laws. She seems hopeful, and so I will allow myself to be slightly hopeful.

I check in on scooters a lot, like a lot a lot, because I believe that scooters—if thoughtfully and equitably implemented—can be a useful and affordable part of our transportation network. In fact, here’s a gif of scooter distribution at 8:00 AM every day in November: Bolt and Bird. Weirdly, a couple of days ago, all of the Bolt scooters disappeared? Does anyone know that the deal is?

This headline from Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense is not about what you think it’s about: “The body behind Chicken Fiesta”. Also the featured image caption is amazing: “Chicken Fiesta owner Harold Vega bicep-curls a rack of his signature rotisserie chicken.“

The RTD’s Sean Gorman has the news that Chesterfield’s Midlothian Special Area Plan passed unanimously the other day. I like to read articles like this so I can keep abreast of the current popular NIMBY talking points. You never know when those same talking points will pop up in a project near you (just kidding, they’ll always pop up at every project). As per for forever, some residents oppose the new special area plan due to its recommendation to add “density” to the corridor—I put that in scare quotes because we’re only talking about three stories. I dunno, seems fine to me.

It’s been a blissfully long time since I’ve had to write about NoBro, TIFs, or downtown arenas—although I did talk about all of them a ton with fellow transit folks from around the country while in New Orleans, to which nearly every single one responded with “A new downtown arena? Really?” But, alas, nothing gold can stay, so I’m hear to let you know that the Navy Hill Development Advisory Commission will meet again this coming Saturday, December 14th, at 9:00 AM in Council Chambers (900 E. Broad Street). I wish I could link to the email the Commission sends out, because it’s a really great resources full of information, but, instead, you’ll have to dig through the Commission’s website to find what you need.

This morning’s longread

All Hail the Rat King

Hey, do you want to read a super long thing about rat kings? Well, I’ve got you covered.

In April 1895, a certain Herr Mayer found a very different kind of relic in a barn attached to Dellfeld’s village school: a wheel of ten dead rats connected at the tips of their entangled tails. A rat king. Herr Mayer sent the strange specimen on to Ludwig Döderlein, director of the Zoological Museum in nearby Strasbourg. It remains there to this day, preserved in a large, formaldehyde-filled beaker. It isn’t always on display, but whenever the museum presents it, certain people make a direct beeline to the rat king case. The questions are always the same: how did this happen? Could they have lived like this for long? Is this natural?

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This morning’s Instagram