The barriers to trees are NOT money. Trees are a question of land use policy: you need permeable, non-compacted surfaces for them to live.

You can either do that by cutting bigger tree pits (which would have to take away road or sidewalk space) or by spending money on more complicated engineering solutions like excavated grow pits, permeable pavement, and/or custom drainage (these things are common in cities like NYC that have their shit together).

I don't expect Philly to start investing in fancy engineered street infrastructure any time soon, BUT it costs ~nothing to turn a parking spot into a tree pit big enough to sustain a big shade tree like an Oak or a London Plane.

By all means a great development. Even the RCO (CCRA) is on board:

>The agreement with CCRA included tweaks to the design, planting of mature street trees, and promises of planters around the new CVS entryway.

>CCRA also asked Goodman Properties to attempt to improve traffic flow. Currently, 19th Street is often congested by trucks delivering bulk goods to CVS. The developer has agreed to limit the size of trucks allowed to make deliveries on 19th and to provide a space in the underground parking garage for those deliveries.

It's crazy how all the RCO is asking for is to do things the city government should be doing but won't. Trees? Can't have those, cost too much to maintain and you'd have to lose some parking if you want to fit them into CC... Loading zones? Can't have those, need to preserve the parking...

& it's not even in stock.

Man, I say this from a place of love and completely separately from anything we're disagreeing about here: I think you should reread your comment, count up the number of times you say 'you want...' or 'you think...' and then check my comments to see if I actually said any of those things.

You're saying I said a bunch of things I didn't say and IMHO that's a red flag for a kind of mental place where you start to see anyone who disagrees with you about anything as your enemy. I say this because I've been there, and it's not a happy place.

Feel free to ignore me, but I hope you have a peaceful and happy day.

You're talking about trained police, not army reservists. The only similarity is that they both wear uniforms and carry guns. If that's all you think it takes to deter crimes, why not just hand out M4s and Flyers jerseys on the corner and deputize randos?

The question of criminal deterrence has been extensively studied and the #1 thing PPD could do to discourage more crimes is to catch more criminals. That's why clearance rates matter, and that's why candidates that are calling for more detectives and for more non-police investigators are better than candidates calling for the army.

BTW, with respect to 'trying new things' -- it's not like we haven't tried 'call the national guard' for law enforcement before. It leads to M2 .50cal machine guns being fired at residential buildings because part time soldiers thought they heard a gunshot and got spooked (Newark, NJ 1967).

If we want to try new things how about taking criminal investigation away from the police department and making it a standalone professional agency that can hire people who don't come up from patrol officers. There's lots of people with relevant investigatory skills who can't become detectives because they didn't go to the police academy in their early 20s. IT, accounting, digital forensics, etc are all highly relevant to solving shootings these days.

How will marginally trained army reservists combat gun violence?

No disrespect to reservists, but they exist in case the United States is invaded, they have zero law enforcement training. Are they going to call in mortar support any time there's a shooting? Because that's what they're trained for.

The man literally called for the National Guard to be deployed to fight gun violence. He's a goober who's being cynically pushed on Philly by right wing billionaires. I hate that this is literally our politics now.

omg, they really did it - instead of a simple interactive map, they posted 14 individual PDFs.

this damn city...

Alternate-side parking works by sweeping only some streets during some times on some days, and other streets on other times on other days. That way, only a fraction of cars have to move at any one time.

The reason to implement this city wide would be to avoid confusion from people who (for example) regularly park in two different neighborhoods, or to prevent (the inevitable) backlash in the kickoff neighborhoods. The other reason would be to clean the damn city.

I'm here for the universal renaming of all groundhogs/woodchucks as marmots. These are some of my favorite animals, and it's always a treat to find them in the alpine. Hell yeah city marmots.

Nah, he got busted by the cops too many times for unicycling in NYC, so now he does his weirdness in the desert. He's one of the folks for whom burning man is dead, they need weirder shit. Absolutely wish I could sustain his dedication to being a freak for even a couple weeks.

Man that's rad. I know a guy who used to do shit like this. He moved out west and does even crazier shit now. Some people are just inherently awesome and can't help but flex.

IMHO we gotta take zoning away from city council. They have too much individual influence so it's all they think about. So not only does development get all fucky, but they stop trying to solve other problems because they're busy playing with development in their district.

Used to live in DC, live in Philly now. Parking enforcement is a critical public service. Without it your city will turn into Philly: people park on the crosswalks, they park on the sidewalk. They park on people's private yards. They will turn the center lane of wide boulevards into a parking lane. They will double and triple park on the sidewalk. They will park in the single traffic lane of small streets. The sheer obstruction of cars in Philly is at a critical mass.

This is all because our parking enforcement agency restricts itself to enforcement in metered/permitted zones and literally ignores everywhere else. The police won't touch parking enforcement with a 10' pole.

The out of control parking is significantly diminishing quality of life. Some streets you have to walk in the road to get around cars parked on the sidewalk.

Effective parking enforcement is a critical public service.

Here's what remains of the last time someone tried this: https://laurenancona.com/parking/#14/39.9547/-75.1695

Well, at least they're trying their hardest!

Yeah I mean that's kind of my point. I would love if our politics were about running the city and not various hyperlocal industry groups fighting over the scraps.

Philly's local government hasn't even been captured by growth industries - real estate and construction (two local industries you can't kill) are the main sources of local political power. Groceries are likewise not a growth industry.

Re: Brown, I know other people are corrupt, but it's uncompelling to claim to be a reformer while embracing a baseline level of overt corruption. I think that hurts the case for reform more than even an ideal reformer could advance it.

Thanks!

I agree - she didn't explain her approach very well. But I also thought that interview was very awkward and poorly paced. They could have spent less time on background and more time on how she plans to accomplish her goals.

Ooh, link?

🤣🤣🤣

They have attested in official responses that they do not have the data or records in any digital or analog format. I asked both broadly and specifically. For the city, neighborhoods, and specific streets. It's their contention that PPA agents use beat maps and enforce rules as written on signs. Apparently Streets has the data.

Based on my understanding of their operations, I believe that you could legalize your parking spot by removing inconvenient signs (at least until Streets replaced them).

Lol I didn't know Amen Brown declared. That clown called for Gov. wolf to deploy the National Guard the other day... to respond to the crime problem. 🫠

Gym hasn't announced yet, but she will. Prob closest you'll get unless someone runs under WFP in the general?

Re: Brown, I don't blame someone for opposing a policy that hurts their bottom line, and it's totally fair to run against it. But I hold a grudge against businesses that can't take the L and move on, esp once it's already been litigated through multiple election cycles (Williams got a big part of his support from anti-soda tax PACs). At some point businesses have to respect democratic will. This whole concept that corporations should have a voice in democratic processes is toxic to our society.

As a principle, I think it's unseemly for business owners to run for office to pursue policies that will profit them. If Brown wants to run he should sell off his stores (of course we'll never get that norm back now that Trump shattered it). Same issue with Domb, tbf. It pains me that some of the most compelling candidates are so fundamentally compromised.

I agree about Rhynhart, she's a longshot but interesting. My sense is that we shouldn't count out Gym, Sanchez, or Parker. Green has like no path, right?