alex baca
@alexbaca.bsky.social
1.9K followers 530 following 400 posts
Mad online about land use. D.C. policy boss @ggwash.org. Ward 1 hardass, exceptionalist. I live in a duplex with a white picket fence. You build more homes, or else; you treat people with dignity, or else. Not paid to tweet, so DM me gossip. Views mine.
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alexbaca.bsky.social
I love the traveling Brompton!!!!!!! How wonderful.
Reposted by alex baca
yonahfreemark.com
This is a great short piece worth thinking about when it comes to transportation & urbanism.

“We cannot optimise both proximity and mobility. Proximity and Mobility cannot be friends. We settle into one of two worlds: (a) high proximity, low mobility or (b) high mobility, low proximity.”
What we mean be high proximity/low mobility verses high mobility/low proximity.
Reposted by alex baca
danancona.bsky.social
All these Abundance/Argument/Searchlight etcetc arguments are so frustrating because we know anything that confirms prior beliefs like "Dems can't win on climate/immigration/trans/etcetc" are going straight into the Dem group chat bloodstream. Clearly that's what they want to hear.
alexbaca.bsky.social
it is not more complicated than this!
alexbaca.bsky.social
Payton didn't even need to be in the room for @justupthepike.bsky.social's and my yombotron session to succinctly describe it. bsky.app/profile/west...
westnorth.com
So much of New Urbanist and adjacent (e.g., ST) discourse just takes NIMBYs at their word. "If only buildings were prettier!"
One key insight from YIMBYs (who have gotten much more infill done) is that NIMBYs are often just grasping at bad-faith straws and can be ignored or outmaneuvered.
alexbaca.bsky.social
Didn’t get to say it at Yimbytown but state capacity at its most basic would be something like…a full-time legislature with full-time staffing in every state.
sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com
anyways. state capacity is actually a serious problem, but "what if there was one form that governed all interactions with the government" is the most galaxy brained fucking thing i've ever heard. consider instead

www.liberalcurrents.com/good-governa...
Good Governance Requires Accountability
We must rediscover the virtue of ambition: the ambition to get out there and make some real changes—and the courage to face the music after.
www.liberalcurrents.com
Reposted by alex baca
regimecpa.bsky.social
You can still get a big cheap McMansion but your neighbors will want a race war and think knowing calculus is a sin. Your kids will be poorer than you if any of these policies the hooting morons who make up the electorate now want actually get passed. Do you take that Texas job offer now?
alexbaca.bsky.social
yes I am Yimbytown’s purveyor of Advil
alexbaca.bsky.social
And we off at yombocon. I’m on an 11 a.m. panel about transit advocacy’s relative losses moderated by my fellow AB, @amb.fyi, and a 2:15 p.m. very stacked looking-backwards-and-forwards history of the movement with longtime real ones Annemarie, Alan, Jesse, Brian, Jenny. Happy 2 be here.
alexbaca.bsky.social
Stan share the paper pls
Reposted by alex baca
drkatehowell.bsky.social
In a working paper, my colleagues & I used statical analysis to understand TOPA’s impact on preservation. We found that it was incredibly effective in preserving both subsidized & unsubsidized affordable housing, particularly in areas where rents are increasing www.umdsmartgrowth.org/news/preserv...
Preservation through Tenant Rights in Washington, DC (Working Paper) – NCSG
www.umdsmartgrowth.org
Reposted by alex baca
notalawyer.bsky.social
“awful people don’t deserve to be killed, but they don’t deserve to be praised, either” is apparently a thought too complex for the pundit mind
alexbaca.bsky.social
pixelatedboat.bsky.social
Oh so it’s a crime now to send a strange, sexy birthday message?????
alexbaca.bsky.social
2025 beach week(s)
alexbaca.bsky.social
“if u get the right policy mix” never works at any level of government!!!!!! that anything-left funders and my fellow advocates and pundits and electeds and advisers don’t know this in their bones is continually so weird to me.
nberlat.bsky.social
"Ds will always win if they get the right policy mix" is what Matt Yglesias believes. it's what Schumer and Jeffries believe. it's why none of them are willing to actually fight fascists; they think just finding the right policy mix means you always win and don't have to fight fascists.
alexbaca.bsky.social
only a girl sometimes btw
alexbaca.bsky.social
Made it this far by skin of teeth, as those of you who watched me grow up on the old site know intimately. Celebrated with gnocchi at Porta, cocktails at Asbury Distilling, and friends from D.C. in Asbury Park. I’ll come home soon.
alexbaca.bsky.social
happy 36th birthday to me. who wants 2 hear me talk on three panels at yombocon.
mpdeejay.bsky.social
They fucking *hate* that Millennial women are hitting the mid-career point and are starting to have real influence and power in organizations. It drives the misogynist Gen X and Boomer men insane.
alexbaca.bsky.social
Land use is inherently local! Even a strategy that works in one place (bipartisan coalition versus grassroots whatever versus electoral) is nearly impossible to map onto another! *That’s* hard. Being nice to the race-science freaks adds more problems to this!
alexbaca.bsky.social
I have been saying this for years and years about YIMBY—the brand makes it hard to do my job advocating for more housing in a blue city that needs to build it—and I find where we are at now exhausting and predictable.
alexbaca.bsky.social
ben we’ve been fending these people off for SO LONG!!!!! and yet! ugh!!
alexbaca.bsky.social
Everyone is going to have to keep buying their own beverages at our happy hours, I am sorry. bsky.app/profile/stan...
stano.bsky.social
When you're doing small-a abundance, you're meeting like 15 people at a local brewery and everyone is buying their own beers.

When you're doing this shit, a bunch of ghouls get invited because that good donor money is on the right and their groups can get you press coverage and even more money.
therealbrent.bsky.social
The Abundance crowd LOVES masked agents kidnapping delivery drivers and snatching children away from their families
alexbaca.bsky.social
I also don’t know why you need a book written by magazine columnists as an ideological framework when you can simply read Foucault, which is what I did on the beach today.