The Spirit of the Dingbat

Architrump

Left-wing vs right-wing populism in one picture.

This couldn't have been more perfect. Ignoring tradeoffs and blaming the main outgroup as the solution to every societal problem.

Recycling truck with machine gu

I bought a pack of cheapo toy cars online and one of them is a recycling truck with a machine gun.

One house turns into 10 homes in Palms, Los Angeles. (2018➡️2022)

While not many new apartment buildings are getting proposed in LA, most now contain 3 bedroom units, due to the “public benefit” incentive program in CHIP.

These two projects by the same architect show very different approaches to 3br units. One tiny compliance units, the other massive penthouses.

Philanthropy Needs to Pick a Side on the Housing Construction Debate Despite California’s severe housing shortage, foundations are still funding on the wrong side of the housing fight there, guest author Ned Resnikoff writes.

Foundations should stop funding groups that advance harmful housing policies.

These left-NIMBY nonprofits dwarf the YIMBY movement w/r/t funding and paid staff.

Great piece from @resnikoff.bsky.social!

www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/philant...

I think we are finally starting to see some change (eg while city council opposed SB 79 it was 8-5 not unanimous) but the geography of the city & historically off-cycle elections means almost all the council seats are homeowner-driven, & we are cursed with opaquely funded nonprofits led by NIMBYs.

@stephenjacobsmith.com posted the project with link to plans. the rotations and serrations are kind of amazing

bsky.app/profile/step...

They done killed Grok ma

The grift is truly unprecedented.

( I always wonder what Spanish geologists call playas… do they return the loan word favor and call them beaches?)

Geologists love to borrow words from other languages (Java in this case).

They only resort to fancy Greek/latin when they have to eg pyroclastic flow bc no one survives them to give them a non-scientific name.

Even accepting that survey you’d expect 40% of housing construction to be smaller houses in denser areas which is definitely not what’s happening.

if only there were some sort of mechanism to better measure people’s propensity to trade off house size for commute time other than a Pew survey. Some sort of preference they could reveal through choices made every day, that would provide much more detailed and realistic information. Ah well.

How does it work if like 50% + 1 want to buy?

It feels like if it actually worked it would create a bunch of the worst capitalized condo associations ever

UNLEASH THE SPIRIT OF THE DINGBAT

(The commercial corollary is strip malls and 25’ zero setback storefronts)

Dingbats allowed for a much greater portion of the community to participate in and benefit from community growth than any centralized planning process cities have come up with in the last 50 years.

That’s the spirit of the dingbat & that’s what we need to get back to promote dynamic growth in LA.

But dingbats were pretty much mass produced affordable housing, in a modern city, which is why I was always going on about the “spirit of the dingbat” that allowed so many people to participate in community development.

You had to live on the Lower East Side because that’s where the work house was, and the work house was there because the docks were there, and it was very costly to move stuff around. As soon as the subway opens up the Lower East Side empties out.

In 1870 the limiting factors on how much housing and what quality you could have were severely limited by transportation options (essentially, walking) and housing technology (no indoor plumbing, no electricity, no gas, no elevators, very costly to go over like 10 stories).

But you can totally see from haphazard patterns in LA that a lot of SFR neighborhoods would develop with dingbat density if allowed - it’s arbitrary lines, if you will.

I think dingbats are a much better example than tenements bc transportation & housing technology today is basically same as 60s.

The real dingbat boom era was the 60s when the city was already car oriented. Great example of how when policy (tax, zoning, basically ministerial approvals) aligns the market really will produce a lot of affordable units. Killed by downzoning, longer approval times, tax changes, higher parking reqs

It would still be funnier if Mamdani stood him up

Better argument is midcentury LA dingbats :)

Here are home price/income ratios in Phoenix in 2002 & 2025.

Why are those homes are now selling for 6x local incomes?

Crapped out neighborhoods in Phoenix are a status marker?

Every city looks like this. The least preferred neighborhoods have become more expensive.

Here's Minneapolis.

It's not true in either sense of the argument.

It isn't true that popular places have always been more expensive.

And it isn't true that the reason some places today are more expensive is because they are more popular. The most expensive cities are actually all shrinking.

This is the other reason you need risk management: by having an organized process everyone agrees to up front, individuals are freed from worrying about being the scapegoat for tail risk.

Have sat in many meetings where FLS officials thought up fantasy disaster scenarios on the fly to justify their requests

These is a troubling quote because this is not how it’s supposed to work. Fire safety rules are supposed to balance cost and benefit, not just push for any possible risk reduction no matter the cost.