The Shortline 5-10-24

Tactical urbanism on Federal Street • Harrisonburg's Stormwater Improvement Plan • Alexandria anti-‘Zoning for Housing’ case delayed • A New Jersey town full of duplexes

Two car parking spaces along Federal Street have been converted into temporary park space, an example of tactical urbanism.

There’s a temporary parklet installation behind the Church of the Incarnation in downtown Harrisonburg, just off Federal Street. It’s a park preview designed and installed by JMU Architectural Design students. The church has plans to turn the parking lot into a permanent park for the city, with playground, picnic area, and performing space.

According to a post on JMU Architectural Design’s Instagram account, the junior studio class focused on a site at the Church of The Incarnation to foster a “Preforming Space” to be placed in the parking lot that’s scheduled for demolition. A much better use for two temporary car storage spaces if you ask me.

The Valley

• On Tuesday the Harrisonburg Public Works Department hosted an Open House at City Hall to gather public input as it works toward making updates to the city’s Stormwater Improvement Plan. (Daily News-Record, WHSV)

• There will be roadwork and detours on I-81, Route 33, Route 256, Route 259 and Route 604 in May. VDOT states the roadwork is due to drainage work, bridge projects, rock and soil testing, widening of roads, and routine maintenance. (Daily News-Record)

• During the flash flooding in Harrisonburg, eight roadways in the city were closed due to high water. (Rocktown Now)

• Steve Wine has leased 34 acres outside Waynesboro to a solar electricity developer, which has installed panels that will generate about 5 megawatts of power at peak capacity. The community solar project is funded by subscriptions from about 1,000 households in the region. (Virginia Mercury)

Virginia

• Alexandria succeeded in its bid today to dismiss a case filed by residents furious with a citywide zoning overhaul that allows developers to build homes with up to four units on any property, but residents will get a chance to try again in a month. (ALX Now)

• Arlington has historically derived more of its tax base from the commercial sector than the average suburban municipality does. The county has a lot of vacant office space. It’s not just a problem for the commercial sector. (Arlington Magazine)

• After connecting 15 data centers totaling 933 megawatts of capacity last year, Dominion Energy Virginia expects to connect 15 more data centers in Northern Virginia to the power grid in 2024. (Loudoun Times-Mirror)

• While small modular reactors (SMRs) represent a promising avenue for clean energy production, they are not a silver bullet solution to Virginia’s energy challenges, particularly because SMRs may be used as a pretense to block the development of solar energy projects in rural Virginia counties. (Virginia Mercury)

• Climate Community Collaborative, also known as C3, is expanding from Charlottesville to Richmond after working the past few years to help businesses reach carbon neutral emission goals, a more modest approach to ultimately reaching zero-carbon goals. (Virginia Mercury)

• Eighteen lawmakers from the Virginia General Assembly submitted a letter Tuesday to the FERC, asking the agency to deny the Mountain Valley Pipeline’s request to start running gas by June 1. (WVTF)

• The Middle Peninsula is often called the septic repair capital of the East Coast. As sea levels rise, groundwater levels are rising, too — an often overlooked but profound impact of climate change. (WHRO)

• Virginia did not reach its 2023 pollution reduction targets for nitrogen and phosphorus, according to modeling tools from the Chesapeake Bay Program, but the state is on track for reducing sediment in the bay. (The Virginian-Pilot)

Elsewhere

• Due to a zoning ordinance that has allowed duplexes since the 1930s, Palisades Park, N.J. has grown in population by adding missing-middle density to existing neighborhoods. The tax base has grown tremendously, and they’ve been able to reduce the tax rates at the same time. (The New York Times)

• The Colorado legislature passed six land-use bills aimed at making housing more affordable by increasing density and eliminating roadblocks to development. The legislation would block many existing local regulations that prohibit ADUs, and prohibit localities from establishing or enforcing minimum parking requirements for residential buildings in specific areas. (The Colorado Sun)

• In widely suppressing the densification of existing residential areas, we have effectively prohibited urban growth as anybody in human history would have recognized it. (The Deleted Scenes)

• Walkability is as much about retail composition as it is about quantity. It depends on having comprehensive retail. Besides re-zoning, enrichment through mixed-use can be achieved by permitting business spaces attached to residential units, commonly known as accessory commercial units, or ACUs. (Next City)

• Residents of manufactured housing parks typically own their homes, but not the parks themselves, which can be incredibly lucrative. Now some residents are forming cooperatives, and taking control. (The Guardian) 

• The tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut may face a housing gap of 920,000 units by 2035, according to a new report. The shortage could result in the region missing out could miss out on 730,000 new jobs by 2035. (Housing Wire)

• Some 56.7 percent of all available US homes in April was located in Southern states, according to a new report by Realtor.com. Available inventory had climbed 19.7 percent year-on-year while it rose 18.4 percent in the Midwest, 7.5 percent in the West and 2.9 percent in the Northeast. (Daily Mail)

• One of the most rapid sea level surges on Earth is besieging the American South, forcing a reckoning for coastal communities across eight U.S. states. The Gulf of Mexico has experienced twice the global average rate of sea level rise since 2010. (The Washington Post)

• Parking minimums have contributed to extensive land use that encourages driving, higher greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and increased infrastructure costs. Reforms in some US cities include capping parking spaces, adjusting fees and removing on-street parking. (Reuters)

• As climate change accelerates, making full use of trees’ ability to provide natural cooling can reduce heat-related deaths. Cities that embrace ambitious urban reforestation policies can cut both their medical bills and their power bills. (The Nature Conservancy)

• Vehicle crashes are among the leading causes of death in the U.S. But it doesn’t have to be this way. We can design or redesign streets to make people drive more slowly or to discourage driving altogether. (Scientific American)

• Instead of expecting residents to get in their cars and drive long (and short) distances, cities should be designed to provide opportunities in close proximity to where people live, reducing overdependence on cars and increasing local social cohesion. (Grist)

• It is already possible to live a car-light life in a Midwestern small city in the US. Carmel, Indiana’s uniqueness seems to be largely due to the vision of one man. (Bicycle Dutch)

• There's new evidence that offering people incentives to purchase e-bikes can significantly reduce their reliance on cars. Researchers said incentive programs can push people to more environmentally-friendly transportation, but the roads need to be friendly to riders as well. (CTV News)

• The Pittsburgh Regional Transit agency has set a goal to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2045 as part of the city’s first climate action plan. The main goal is to get more people to ride buses with a twofold aim of reducing carbon emissions as well as avoiding driving off the “fiscal cliff” PRT fears is on the horizon if that doesn’t happen. (WSEA)

• Data-center developers are in the midst of a building boom spurred on by powerful new computer chips driving artificial intelligence-enabled products, such as ChatGPT. U.S. data-center space expanded by 26% in 2023. (WSJ)