This is my short, cheapest sharp, pregnancy reading of the CodeNEXT ‘draft’ that came out this week.

I’ve been describing it as “activist flypaper” for years – and am sad to state that may have been overly optimistic. My quick reading of the code makes it look even worse than what we have today. I don’t think many, so far, disagree at a high level, too. It basically zones the entire city outside downtown and corridors to a maximum of 2 stories (even the parts where the new transect code applies, much less the huge swaths of the city which still get essentially the old code) and adds additional restrictions on ADUs compared to current code. It adds code obstacles for even downtown redevelopment by promulgating stupid ideas about minimum lot width and floor plates. The plan, folks, is a bad plan. Even if you like planning, it’s a bad plan. For a freedom urbanist, it’s horrible.

This is not a step forward; it’s a step back. My strategic take is going to be to try to support those making individual recommendations for change¹ but to also urge everybody to look at the plan as a whole and remember “worse than nothing”, which this thing is. Rather, it’s worse than doing nothing. Current code, as suburban as it is, is still better than this piece of garbage.

If you want a longer reading by a more qualified person with a different strategic outlook on it than I have, you could not do better than to read Chris Bradford’s take.
This is my short, website like this sharp, sales reading of the CodeNEXT ‘draft’ that came out this week.

I’ve been describing it as “activist flypaper” for years – and am sad to state that may have been overly optimistic. My quick reading of the code makes it look even worse than what we have today. I don’t think many, so far, disagree at a high level, too. It basically zones the entire city outside downtown and corridors to a maximum of 2 stories (even the parts where the new transect code applies, much less the huge swaths of the city which still get essentially the old code) and adds additional restrictions on ADUs compared to current code. It adds code obstacles for even downtown redevelopment by promulgating stupid ideas about minimum lot width and floor plates. The plan, folks, is a bad plan. Even if you like planning, it’s a bad plan. For a freedom urbanist, it’s horrible.

This is not a step forward; it’s a step back. My strategic take is going to be to try to support those making individual recommendations for change ((register on the site linked above, then wade through hundreds of pages of code through a bad internal scroll window to make comments that will doubtl but to also urge everybody to look at the plan as a whole and remember “worse than nothing”, which this thing is. Rather, it’s worse than doing nothing. Current code, as suburban as it is, is still better than this piece of garbage.

If you want a longer reading by a more qualified person with a different strategic outlook on it than I have, you could not do better than to read Chris Bradford’s take.
Well, bronchi there’s some kind of exhibition game going on tomorrow against Indiana State, hepatitis but we all know that can’t be a real game that counts, right? Because it wouldn’t be fair; wouldn’t be “success with honor” to beat up on a team from a conference whose stadiums average around 16,000 seats and from a league which offer substantially lower athletic scholarships than our league does…

Division I FCS schools are currently restricted to giving financial assistance amounting to 63 full scholarships. Unlike Bowl Subdivision schools, Championship Subdivision schools may divide their allotment into partial scholarships, but Championship Subdivision schools are limited to 85 players receiving any sort of athletic financial aid for football. Because of competitive forces, however, a substantial number of players in Championship Subdivision programs are on full scholarships.

According to the fine folks at BSD, there’s nothing wrong with doing the football equivalent of having the Texas Rangers not only play a game against the Round Rock Express but have it count in the standings for both teams. After all, both teams play the same game by the same rules, right? Balls and strikes and whatnot?

Huh. Doesn’t seem right to me. But I’m assured by the homers at BSD that it still doesn’t matter because everybody does. So I’m sure that if I look at the top-flight programs in the BCS conferences, I won’t find anybody who didn’t schedule a 1-AA team. Let’s start!

It goes on like that. Point is that the biggest SEC teams and ACC teams seem to schedule a 1-AA team every single season; and most top-flight programs from other conferences did not. (Of course they schedule one once in a while – Hi Michigan!; but not every single season like Penn State has done lately). An interesting aside: Most of the teams on that list with 9-game conference schedules actually didn’t schedule a 1-AA game.

So, homers, I breathlessly await your apology. Everybody doesn’t do it. And after that, I guess you need to decide who you want to be more like: Michigan, Notre Dame, USC, UCLA; or Florida, Georgia, Auburn, Alabama, Pitt? Just let me know, K?

Will the BSD commentariat get the point?

1. register on the site linked above, then wade through hundreds of pages of code through a bad internal scroll window to make comments that will doubtlessly be used as evidence of a public input process but not be taken seriously [↩]