regul

Tearing down the properties has reduced their local property tax base and also no doubt reduced the values of the properties across the streets as well. It’s creating a downward spiral of local tax revenue while no doubt increasing state maintenance obligations.

Decisions like this are why small towns like this are going broke. They make themselves easier to drive through and tear down the properties that constitute their tax base.

City or state would have had to pay to buy the properties anyway, though. Then the money spent on the widening could easily have been spent to modernize and update (or otherwise improve) the buildings.

The issue, to be clear, is not who makes the surveillance cameras. It’s the surveillance cameras being installed in the first place.

Alarmism about Chinese surveillance cameras is missing the forest for the trees.

Except if the side of the truck says “U-Haul” or “Home Depot” people understand you’re not the kind of asshole who buys and drives a fuckoff huge truck every day of the week.

Here’s some cool stuff our looser rules and more reasonable costs used to allow but we got rid of all of that so don’t worry.

They had really extensive plans in 1984 that accomplished amazing things. And then immediately got rid of them after the Olympics.

https://la.curbed.com/2018/6/7/17419270/olympics-2028-los-angeles-1984-traffic

Mt. Moran. Grand Tetons National Park in Wyoming.

If you have an older coin-op washer in your building you can usually look up the model number and either buy a master key or learn the default programming code to set the price.

the impetus to improve the infrastructure will be stronger if conditions are worse

don’t chicken-and-egg yourself out of densification

The people who post this meme often do not want for-profit housing development of any kind.